The Intellectual Dishonesty of William Lane Craig

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That's basically correct. I mean..... HerrGrimm's evidence is pretty solid that Craig HAS TO accept ID to be considered honest, and yet ID is not intellectually honest. I would take Craig's explicit statements as rhetoric, and not seriously. After all, he doesn't really have wiggle room.

I agree his positions do seem to be at odds with the Biola doctrinal statement.

Right. Which leads to my question:



I'll just leave that as a rhetorical one; I'll rewind back to



You're both here, and this was like the last statement between you two.

Also, 91, I would not be gloating about Dawkins always avoiding Craig if you keep giving Tadzio the cold shoulder for most of his arguments.

Now if you excuse me, I'm off to randomly appear on another thread. Awesomelyglorious did expose me as nonexistent, and it gives me the element of surprise around the forum. Good bye.

I find that Tazdio is almost impossible to follow. I respond to parts when I can be bothered making sense of his arguments.

Dawkins could feel the same way about Craig.

Maybe, Dawkins is not trained in philosophy, which he why he makes so many mistakes, so they would not speak the same 'language'. I certainly am not trained in Tadzio.

There's not really a lot to say. I know 91 was being inconsistent. He's continually inconsistent, and he continually tries to cover up for it, even if he has to deny the laws of logic themselves. So, of course he'll say this isn't an appeal to authority, but that's the only plausible interpretation of his statement, and given how he's handled appeals to authority in the past this is clear evidence of gross inconsistency. Even if there were another interpretation, it's almost certainly going to involve an inconsistency from him.

He's difficult, but he's not more difficult than other posters have been in the past. I mean, really, the issue is that he disagrees with you. Tadzio is actually not worse than philologos was as both of them were "almost impossible to follow", it's just that philologos was a fellow theist, so you showed him greater favor, even making defensive arguments for his behavior, when you simply snub and see the worst in Tadzio.

Philologos and I engaged in good dialogue, his PM's to me help me understand where he was coming from. I have certainly discussed Tadzio in PM with other posters but neither they nor I have been able to work him out. I Tadzio wants to set up some sort of a dialogue, then that is fine. At this stage however, I engage with people who make more sense.

It is interesting that you are now making this thread about me.

the debate would be meaningless Dawkins out of his depth in the dubious field of philosophy
and Craig an absolute and willful moron on the topic of evolution.

In my opinion the only worthwhile study of the effects of religion are found in sociology
(by their fruit ye shall know them)
a field neither of these bloviators are qualified to make a peep.

"full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

Ok, enough mud, lets get some things straight. I am not saying that one cannot make an appeal to authority; as you point out I make them all the time; though I also tend to back them up with argument as I consider it pretty slap dash to just cite an authority. What you don't seem to get is that you committed a fallacious appeal to authority. There is difference that so far you have not appreciated.

When you say, 'there is a presumption amongst an authority that x is true' then this is only a legitimate appeal to authority if there actually is a presumption amongst the authority and that authority has the expertise in that particular area. Now you made this claim;

That b-theory of time was the more standard view.

Now firstly, b-theory of time is NOT the more standard view. The results YOU put forward show that the MAJORITY of those polled did not lean towards either a or b theory (58.2%).

The problem is that on the evidence you presented, the statements are not even remotely roughly equivalent. The argument made was that someone would be justified in accepting the more standard view, but the authority you referenced to HAS NO STANDARD VIEW. Certainly a-theory is a minority view but the view you endorsed from authority, b-theory, is also not a the standard view; in fact that standard view seems to be agnosticism. Hence under the rules of logic you committed a fallacious appeal to authority. It is also not the case that all philosophers are philosophers of time, many of those philosophers polled would not be authorities on the subject matter. Hence on these grounds also, it is a fallacious appeal to authority. So on two grounds you have committed a fallacy and then you proceeded to throw a fit about my posting using authorities. There are legitimate appeals to authority, but yours was fallacious.

Further you knew that b-theory was not the more standard view, it was not even remotely the majority view. That is just blatantly dishonest, or blatantly incompetent.

I have no problem conceding a point where I see a merit in the position. I did it on this page; Herr Grimm made an interesting point. With you however, it is a different story, I have never once seen you concede a point, even when you are blatantly wrong; rather you just get angry, throw some mud and then change the subject. How many times have you insisted that the euthyphro dilemma works, despite the fact that it does not and me providing evidence that it fails? How many times have you made misstatements about physics, or just posted an article you didnt understand or have any intention of defending. AG you are not right, you just have blogs and bluster, when you run out of both, you tend to just run.

Last edited by 91 on 30 Nov 2011, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, there isn't. You don't understand logic.



91, you utterly misread a claim. I stated: "This view isn't a prominent view in physics, meaning that a non-physicist is generally going to be more justified in accepting a more standard view."

Your response is "The results YOU put forward show that the MAJORITY of those polled did not lean towards either a or b theory (58.2%)." Note: what is the survey on? (I'll give you a hint: It's not physicists) Yeah, the poll is on PHILOSOPHERS. So, what PHILOSOPHERS consider to be a majority is not ACTUALLY RELEVANT to my statement. Most PHYSICISTS are not neo-Lorentzian, and that's something YOU KNOW to be the case.

Not only that, but YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION OF YOURSELF IS WRONG!

You stated:


What is this quote saying? It's saying "massive appeal to authority" with the problem being that I just "affirmed a particular theory on the grounds it was more popular". Note: If this was actually a matter of me MISREFERENCING MY AUTHORITY, your last sentence would say "You just affirmed a particular theory on the grounds that it was more popular, when it really is not". Instead, your statement is pretty clearly stating that you think I made the fallacy of affirming something just because it was more popular. (Being mistaken on what is more popular, or on what authority is correct, is not an informal fallacy. It's just a mistake in identifying an authority, so either way this is a massive failure.)

Finally, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW AN APPEAL TO AUTHORITY WORKS!! !



Problem: Appeals to authority are informal fallacies. Informal fallacies are not fallacies under the rules of logic. They're fallacies because they involve absurd premises that people commonly use but cannot believe. So, there is no logical contradiction in this argument:
1) We should not believe any claim is true if a liar says it.
2) 91 is a liar
3) Therefore we should not believe that any claim he says is true.

But it is an ad hominem.

So, for you to make that statement involves that YOU DON'T KNOW THE LAWS OF LOGIC.


And I've referred to Wes Morriston's modified Euthyphro. At most you can only say that this is an ongoing debate but you can't say that we have some solid and undeniable conclusion on the Euthyphro.


I actually understood my article, and you didn't. You couldn't even cite the right author for it and continued to assert against my explicit quotations what the authors were really trying to do. And no, I posted it without an intention of defending it, mostly because neither of us are physicists. I've seen you try to work at math, (and logic) and you can't/don't do that. The use of the article was to point out that we can't just all jump on the "neo-Lorentzian bandwagon" as there are ongoing debates on it. Meaning that, the A-Theory of time is not clearly more justified to believe, meaning that the KCA can be legitimately UTTERLY dismissed.

As for "when you run out of both, you tend to just run." I have historically had a reputation as one of the most stubborn arguers on this forum. I don't run very often.

91, is this a joke, or is this a parody? Multiple people have SEEN YOU openly dispute the LAWS OF LOGIC simply because LOGIC ITSELF DISAGREED WITH ONE OF YOUR POINTS. Nearly NOTHING I could ever do on this forum could ever match up to that moment of fail, so your accusations towards me are just ludicrous. You, as has been repeatedly demonstrated on more than one instance, don't even UNDERSTAND LOGIC (or English for that matter) and yet you're criticizing me??? This is just utterly f*****g ludicrous.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 30 Nov 2011, 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

@AG

The a and b theory of time is a PHILOSOPHICAL position on time, it is part of the PHILOSOPHY of time it is not a matter of what physicists believe, they don't study it and when they do they are philosophers of time (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/). Your appeal to authority fallacious on the grounds that you are not even using the right authority. When Lotentz was writing his ideas on time he did so as a philosopher, he even termed it his 'philosophical writing on time measurements'. The only mistake I made was in assuming you actually knew what you were talking about. I promise I will never make that mistake again. My response was based on the assumption, silly I know, that you knew the difference.



Excuse me for not appreciating that you did not even know what you were talking about. I should have stated 'that it was more popular amount the WRONG people.

The argument you made was wrong, even if you were talking about the right people, which you weren't. Just how big a hole do you want to dig for yourself?

Once again, REFERENCE FAIL. What did I say?

"Craig being a prominent philosopher of time doesn't mean that his ideas in the philosophy of time are considered good, nor does it have ANYTHING TO DO with whether we should accept the Neo-Lorentzian view, which we have to in order to take the KCA seriously.(And note: This view isn't a prominent view in physics, meaning that a non-physicist is generally going to be more justified in accepting a more standard view) "

The Neo-Lorentzian view *IS* physics. Not only that, but you're still just shuffling about trying to get me on a failing, ANY failing will do. Otherwise, what else can explain the fact that I've made the terms of this clear in my statements, and yet you're still trying to shuffle this about. That it's physics is noted by how it is also referenced to as the "Neo-Lorentzian ether THEORY" and how it claims to be connected to other physical laws, and everything else. I mean, the article I referenced clearly was treating as if it were a matter of science, which is why they compared it to evolution and other scientific theories. I mean, seriously 91, you're blustering about because YOU'RE DISHONEST.


You misreading something I wrote, where I made all of my terms clear is not a matter of your appreciation. It's a matter of you misreading something. Period.

I said nothing wrong. Neo-Lorentzian theory/interpretation/whatever have you is simply not the standard answer at this point in time. That's even going by my own source, because saying "most people don't have an opinion" doesn't impact the people who DO HAVE AN OPINION. Because, if you actually look into the survey, the survey actually breaks it down.

Do you know what the largest chunk of people in the 58.2% is?
"Insufficiently familiar with the issue 287 / 931 (30.8%)"

Then we also have these answers, which are also pretty confused or useless:
Skip 53 / 931 (5.6%)
Accept both 29 / 931 (3.1%)
The question is too unclear to answer 19 / 931 (2%)
There is no fact of the matter 17 / 931 (1.8%)

So, when we get the final break down, we still get the much greater percentage siding with B-theory. And if this were metaphysicists, the results would be more clearly B-theory. Finally, among the philosophers of physical science, it's very strongly B-theory above everything else. Same as philosophers of general science. Now, we can go about quibbling on the issue, but the fact of the matter is that neo-Lorentzian view is easily seen NOT MENTIONED in a few places, like the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on time: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#TheBThe "It looks as if the A Theorist must choose between two possible responses to the argument from relativity: (1) deny the theory of relativity, or (2) deny that the theory of relativity actually entails that there can be no such thing as absolute simultaneity. Option (1) has had its proponents (including Arthur Prior), but in general has not proven to be widely popular. This may be on account of the enormous respect philosophers typically have for leading theories in the empirical sciences. Option (2) seems like a promising approach for A Theorists, but A Theorists who opt for this line are faced with the task of giving some account of just what the theory of relativity does entail with respect to absolute simultaneity." (Note: If there was a very well-known answer to this, don't you think we'd see Neo-Lorentzian interpretation/theory? Don't you think that we'd see an article in the encyclopedia SOMEWHERE about this?)

Stop blustering about, and stop playing this game. I have no interest in your perpetual habits of dishonesty.

Wow. The projection 91's displaying here is legendary.

The Neo-Lorentzian interpretation is a metaphysical interpretation of the underlying work of physicists. It falls into the realms of philosophy. That is why Craig writes on it and defends it, it is a metaphysical concept, not a matter of simple physics; it is an INTERPRETATION of the physics. You REALLY need to separate out the Lorentzian approach to physics from the Lorentzian interpretation of general relativity. The neo-Lorentzian interpreation has to do with the metaphysics of general relativity.



From the wiki:

Viewed as a theory of elementary particles, Lorentz's electron/ether theory was superseded during the first few decades of the 20th century, first by quantum mechanics and then by quantum field theory. As a general theory of dynamics, Lorentz and Poincare had already (by about 1905) found it necessary to invoke the principle of relativity itself in order to make the theory match all the available empirical data. By this point, the last vestiges of a substantial ether had been eliminated from Lorentz's "ether" theory, and it became both empirically and deductively equivalent to special relativity. The only difference was the metaphysical. As a result, the term "Lorentz ether theory" is sometimes used today to refer to a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of special relativity.

You are making a mountain out of your mistake, you would be much better off just conceding that you were wrong and move on.



So now your ok to argue that it is philosophy. I grow tired of your shifting about. Your statement would not get you anywhere near satisfying the merits of an argument from authority. This is especially the case since your aim is to 'utterly dismiss' the Kalam on the grounds you are developing.



Your not ready for McTaggart I mentioned a couple of days ago that you would eventually stumble onto his work and think you had solved the matter, you need to figure out what you are discussing first.