The Intellectual Dishonesty of William Lane Craig

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I think there are a few major problems with positing this. I will focus on this propositions, mainly as one that is aimed at the Cosmological Arguments (both Kalam and from Contingency), rather than the teleological, if you are unsatisfied with this, then I can go into some detail on the latter at a later point in time.

I will firstly explain for the benefit of those reading who are not familiar with these arguments. The Kalam posits that the universe has a cause and then makes an argument that the cause must be timeless, space-less, immensely powerful and personal. By positing something that spawns universes, MCalavera is attempting to deny that there needs to be a first cause. The second cosmological argument he is attempting to refute is the argument from contingency; which is a totally separate argument. The Cosmological Argument from Contingency posits that either the universe exists necessarily (it could not have failed to exist) or contingently (dependent on some other explanation), it then argues that it does not exist necessarily; therefor it requires an explanation. By arguing that this 'cosmic field' exists 'necessarily' it therefor refutes the argument from contingency.

Although this might be surprising for you to hear, this is not an original objection and it does not flummox either cosmological argument. Firstly, it is not clear that what you are proposing is less simple than the contention from theism (I am assuming that you are attempting to dismiss theism from an argument from parsimony).

Let me first start by pointing out that you give us no good reason for thinking some part of the universe or multiverse exists necessarily. You just posit it, but argument is not that simple, if you are as familiar with the argument from Contingency as you claim to be, then you would know that the second premise of the argument is dependent the idea that the universe requiring a contingent explanation is more likely than it being necessarily existent. You are right that if the universe does have a necessarily existing component, then the argument would fail, but saying that it fails because you posit that it could does not cut it by even the longest of shots. You actually need to make the case that some part of the universe/multiverse is necessarily existent. Until you do that you are just engaging in Schopenhauer's Taxicab Fallacy of having arrived at your destination through the explaining of causes, you just dismiss the need for that cause to apply to what you are saying. On the argument from contingency God is given an affirmative argument as to why his existence would have the property of being necessary, you make no such case for yours. Taken as it stands, your statement is a massive hand-wave in lieu of an argument.

Edit: Removed extra quote boxes

Last edited by 91 on 04 Dec 2011, 11:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually, no, I'm not trying to deny that there needs to be a first cause. I'm trying to debunk the claim that it has to be a personal God who used his mind, especially, to bring forth this universe. And I think I've succeeded with this thus far.



I'm simply replacing the posited God with a posited "cosmic field" which is not a part of any universe it brings forth. It's a form of "structure" that's always been and that just randomly and intrinsically brings forth universes and such into existence.

So, in this sense, if your posited God is allowed to be necessary to exist, then my posited "cosmic field" is also allowed to be necessary to exist.

I've given you an alternative argument and even a more parsimonious one. Your job is to explain why the explanation for God is better and more parsimonious (contrary to what I said).

It's not a hand-wave. I've taken quite some time during my long absence thinking about these arguments.

I can even argue that your posited God could not have used his mind to create this universe and that, therefore, he's no different from the cosmic field that I posit. Which one is a simpler explanation?

I think this line of argument fails for three major reasons. Before I mention my reasons I must first point out that your attempt at substitution into the argument accepts parts (such as necessary existence) but rejects other (such as the need for the necessarily existing object in question to be space-less itself) you need to give a positive argument for these assumptions. Also, this is pretty much the same argument that is made by the C. Stephen Layman

The first way that I think your argument fails is that your 'cosmic field' is something that exists separate from a universe. If we accept this, we still do not get past the fact that this field must have components. For example, some sort of immensely powerful energy that is powerful enough to spawn the universe. Interestingly this fails because how can you argue that a fundamentally physical object is necessarily existing? These components, like a quark, could be fundamental to the development of a complex system but why should some part be necessarily existing whereas an exact replica component would be contingent? Hence nothing like what you are describing could be necessarily existing. I don't know of ANY naturalistic cosmologists who would argue that a specific existing object must have the special property of also being 'necessarily existing'.

Further elaborating on my first objection. The idea of one than one 'cosmic field' does not lead to internal contradictions in the way positing more than one maximally great being does (the first is possible the latter, by definition is impossible). So it is entirely possible that more than one of your 'cosmic fields' could exist; theoretically an exact replica of the first could exist in another logically possible world in which it were a contingent entity. Hence it would lead to a contradiction in that one would be necessarily existent and the other not. So why accept one as necessarily existent and the other as not? If they are in every property otherwise the same, why should one have an utterly different modal property of being necessarily existent? Essentially 'necessary' existence cannot be a 'de facto' property it must be a 'modal' property.

Secondly this argument fails because it does not solve the problem that Dr. Craig raises sans personhood. In nutshell you are proposing a state/event causation of a universe. Dr. Craig and other philosophers have put forward compelling arguments as to why this does not work.

As Dr. Caig puts it:
If the unchanging cause is sufficient for the production of the effect, then the cause should not exist without the effect, that is to say, we should have state/state causation. If the cause is not sufficient for the production of the effect, then some change must take place in the cause to produce the effect, in which we have event/event causation and we must inquire all over again for the cause of the first event. The best way out of this dilemma is agent causation, whereby the agent freely brings about some event in the absence of prior determining conditions.

Now you have ruled out agent causation by depriving your answer of a will; hence it fails to resolve the quandary proposed above.

The third way in which your argument fails is that you are depriving terms of the ontological significance. On your view the force must be timeless, spaceless and immensely powerful. But you posit a 'cosmic field'. As a term it is rediculous when it is considered as an explanation. A cosmic force is by definition something which exists within the universe but distinct from the Earth. You need a new name for your explanation in the first instance. But the objection is more than just one from semantics. The complaint is actually with the second world 'field' there is no such thing as a field that is space-less. When you rob the terms of their meaning you are pretty much just playing a trick with language. The term 'cosmic field' is dramatically inaccurate with regards to what you are actually proposing. In effect you are proposing a timeless, spaceless, immaterial force and all we really need to add to your definition is 'personal' and we get to pretty standard definition of God and we have good reason for accepting that addition. Hence you also fall for the mistake that Lewis Wolpert did:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go6m-KNUmG4[/youtube]



If your argument does not satisfy the same criteria then parsimony does not enter in to it.

Well, I did say this "cosmic field", or "cosmic entity", or whatever you want to call it, is outside of time and space (refer to my original response again).

So what I posit is space-less.

I'll call this postulation "cosmic entity" from now on to avoid potential (and unnecessary) semantic arguments (though the word "cosmic" may also need to be replaced, but bear with me anyway).



My postulated "cosmic entity" is not something that exists in this physical universe, though. Just like your God, my "cosmic entity" is separate from any universe. And just like your God, it doesn't have components that make it do this and that. It just intrinsically and randomly does what it does.

Why should your God be excused from the conditions you impose on my "cosmic entity"?



What, objectively, is "maximally great" anyway? I could argue that my "cosmic entity" is what's maximally great, not your God, and you wouldn't be able to give me an objective reason why my case is logically unacceptable.

You're excusing, once again, God from conditions you impose on this "cosmic entity" when there's basically not much of a difference other than that this postulated God of yours has a mind and the postulated cosmic entity does not.



Your God is supposed to be an unchanging cause. So it could''ve easily been ruled out by the state/state causation condition. But since you like to do a lot of special pleading for God, you had to find an excuse to do so. In this case, it's having a free will. Thus, your argument for agent causation.

Well, let me explain why this doesn't work out (in my view) by showing that God either wasn't free in bringing forth this universe or he randomly brought forth this universe ... thus, having no will/mind to do what he wills.

If God has free will, then he's free to bring forth any sort of universe that he can bring forth. And this divine freedom entails that he must randomly bring forth any universe into existence. Because, as soon as it's argued that God doesn't freely randomly bring forth universes, then God must not be a free agent. Either way, this "personhood" cannot work with God and God can only be a mindless entity that can randomly and intrinsically bring forth universes into existence. In others, it's no God at all and it's basically the same as what I postulated.

So which do you now reckon is the more parsimonious answer?

Your turn to respond.

Hi MCalavera,

91 doesn't clearly define any continuous use of the words he uses and cites to others. This makes any discussion rather fruitless and futile.

The technique was reminded to me again when I was reviewing "Quantum (Un)speakables: From Bell to Quantum Information" by Bertlmann, as the "one and only one" Law of God polemic surfaced again (20 years ago the 2nd Law made refridgerators impossible without "God's Help", and thus proved "God"), and with fancy words, and circular cited religious institutions' apologists, such nonsense is back again.

Amazon-dot-com has one of the contamination of science by creationists debates listed again as "Creationists are trying to rewrite the Laws of Thermodynamics" at: http://www.amazon.com/forum/science/ref ... DZIWD9G4LC

Some blogs address other aspects:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011 ... am_lan.php

http://www.ivorytowermetaphysics.com/?p=322

"WLC" knows Bayesian Probability techniques quite well, and he "plays" stupid whenever it works as a distraction to exploit them or to deny them, so it is waste of time to try for a constructive discussion, as only polemics are used at the expense of the subject.

Exploiting with the same game might achieve something in "Polemics" by Alain Badiou, mixed with "The Seduction of Unreason" by Wolin, as: "A series of brilliant metapolitical reflections, demolishing established opinion and dominant propaganda, and reorienting our understanding of events from the Kosovo and Iraq wars to the Paris Commune and the Cultural Revolution. Following on from Alain Badiou's acclaimed works Ethics and Metapolitics, Polemics is a series of brilliant metapolitical reflections, demolishing established opinion and dominant propaganda, and reorienting our understanding of events from the Kosovo and Iraq wars to the Paris Commune and the Cultural Revolution. With the critical insight and polemical bravura for which he is renowned, Badiou considers the relationships between language, judgment and propaganda – and shows how propaganda has become the dominant force. Both wittily and profoundly, Badiou presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with politics, and questions what constitutes political truth."

But as Candide told Dr. Pangloss, watching tomatoes grow might be better productive.

Tadzio

Well, thanks for the links, but I'm going to have to disagree with the fruitless bit for now. I don't think I'm yet out of options to make my case even stronger.

This seems as good of a place as any to start with your post. The objections I raised here were that a 'cosmic field' could be replicated since all it was needed to do was spawn universe and exist eternally. You claimed that this formulation could be necessarily existing, but a quick analysis of the possibility of another replica of your formulation could just as easily be contingent in its existence. On theism God is taken to be a maximally great being, for example has the modal property of omnipotence. Another omnipotent being is not possible because being all powerful would entail logical contradiction if there was also another being that was all powerful. These beings could create a state of affairs where one willed that elephants were pink and the other grey. Your universe generator faces no such impediment, all it has to do is generate universes. Another can do that just as easily and be contingent so labeling your formulation as being necessarily existent is not something that is entailed in the description of its modal properties.



That is a not the case. God is not unchangeable. A timeless being must be changeless by definition but that does not entail that it is immutable (incapable of change) don't confuse a de facto property with a modal property. The formulation you put forward of a cosmic force which you describe as being specifically 'outside of time'. Dr. Craig argues that God exists 'in time' after the advent of time.



This point is sadly, lacking in merit. It rules out the idea that God needs a reason for creating anything in the first place. God is not compelled to create anything, God by definition could have just sat in timeless existence and been perfectly content with himself. He is not compelled by his nature to 'randomly' do anything or make any more of anything unless he wills it. God created our universe because he has a reason for it, he is not required to do it and generating it randomly would stand in total opposition to any conception of divine purpose.

There are a number of atheists who jump in to make attacks on the various arguments for the existence of God. They watch a debate or two, then check out the blogs see some supposed refutations and then invariably, they end up here in the PPR insisting that they are right. The problem is that in order to understand where they are going wrong, often times I need to get into specific definitions and talk about concepts as they exist in the literature. Just about anyone who is trained in philosophy is going to be able to talk about modal properties but when you start discussing the philosophy of time, or validity, or where the subtle line between fallacy is crossed; the discussion gets technical. These arguments are well thought out and not defended by people who are stupid. The assumption that all theists are stupid and that theistic philosophers are just used car salesmen is an image that persist in the popular world. When they hit a wall of research, when the definitions of terms cannot be easily discovered on google anymore, once they argument becomes more than a superficial sense of the other sides wrongness they feel they have been cheated because their stereotypes are just self-reinforcing.

Hi 91,

It sounds like you are telling a God that he doesn't believe in any Gods. Naughty, Naughty, Naughty!! !

An introductory book on Bayesian Statistics undermines WLC's abuse of probability theory. Conditional Probability involves numbers, not endless gobblygook. WLC tried to exploit many people's ignorance of conditional probability, as if counting cards at Blackjack proves the card-counter is blessed by a God, when in fact, the card-counter is just using numbers and memory, without any Godly miracles at all.

If you catch the used-car salesperson rolling back the odometer, it is a perfect bet that he doesn't always tell the truth, and it is much more likey he uses techniques commonly labeled under "dishonest".

Tadzio

Please elaborate? As far as I am aware Craig always gives his Bayesian formula behind his arguments when discussing them in print. For example here is the formula he used in his debate with Lawrence Krauss (Pr (G | E & B) > Pr (G | B)). As an example of how people misinterpret or misrepresent Craig's arguments Krauss accused him of essentially using this (Pr (G | E & B) > 0.5) formula. Basically he accused Craig of arguing that the probability of God is greater than 50%. By looking at the two we can see that they have nothing remotely in common. Krauss assumes that Craig is using a frequency model of probability rather it is the probability comparison of two positions.

This is just you making more rules up. I don't recall you making any argument as to why anything that can be replicated must not be necessary to exist.

Make an argument for such a case, and let's examine it.



You accept such a logical contradiction for your God (that he is timeless and changeless yet not immutable), yet you don't accept the logical contradiction that two omnipotent beings can exist simultaneously within reality. I see no distinction between changeless and immutable. I think you're just abiding by arbitrary rules that allow you to keep arguing for God while failing to be consistent with these rules when they go against you.

That's not a good way to make a case for God. And so I reject your argument as a valid argument without further (and valid) elaboration. So do elaborate on it while you get the chance.



Note the bold. Why didn't God just sit there in timeless existence and not create anything at all?

What made him do it? The fact that I'm asking this question means something must have led God to do it. Is it a free will? Or is it a determined will?

If it's a free will, it could only have been made randomly as free will implies no factor whatsoever influencing or causing his FREE will to do one thing rather than another.

Otherwise, if God isn't free to create any universe that he can create, then this universe (assuming your postulated God exists) must have been brought forth into existence because your God had no free option to bring forth a rather different one.

So in both cases, upon creation, God could not have used his mind in the way that we tend to use our minds.

So I would say that God's mind is unnecessary, and since your God, by argument, is an unembodied Mind, then he is unlikely to have existed. Or rather, he is not a necessary being.

My postulated entity is free of this free mind/personhood conundrum, and so my explanation is simpler than your one (if it has some of the difficulties and paradoxes that your God shares anyway).

If it can be replicated, then it does not exist necessarily as a necessarily existing object. It can exist as a contingent object; contingent upon its replication. There is nothing within your description that lends itself towards the claim that what you are proposing is necessarily existing. Things are either necessarily existing OR contingently existing the categories are mutually exclusive. A thing is not logically consistent if it can be both as a necessarily existing thing cannot be otherwise; it has to be necessarily true under all circumstances. The fact that we can replicate what you are describing as a contingent entity, entails that it cannot be a necessarily existing entity.

For example
There is no such thing as a married bachelor is a necessarily true statement. There is no possible world that is in accordance with the laws of logic where a bachelor is married.

The statement, all cats are white, could be true in a possible world but not in another, hence if it is true it is contingently true.



That would be a fallacy of equivocation. Immutability is the modal property of being incapable of change; a changlessness is a de facto property.

Dr Craig:
"I agree that God changed in creating the universe. But that only proves that He’s not immutable. Don’t confuse changelessness with immutability. A timeless being must be changeless, but that doesn’t entail it is immutable (incapable of change). You’re confusing a de facto property with a modal property." Question of the Week 182, (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=8429)





God has no needs but that does not mean he cannot have intent. There is a massive missing section in this argument you are making. There is no supporting argument for the proposition that you are making since God has no needs he can only act in a random fashion.

As I said before, you're making up the rules based on your own wishful thinking just so you can have God be the only "logical" explanation for the existence of the universe. I don't have to submit to these rules especially if I believe that my postulated entity is necessary to exist regardless. You're the one saying it can be replicated and can be contingent. But even if it CAN be replicated, it ISN'T replicated in practice in my explanation. There is only one and it just happens to exist. That's why we exist. So you can't force it to be contingent if it simply just exists by its own nature. You have to go with what I propose just as I have to go with what you propose concerning your God.

Besides, it can't be replicated because it's eternal and never had a beginning. Any "replication" of it would not be an accurate one but just a model of it.

Besides, it's a qualitatively infinite entity in its own dimension/world/reality or whatever (just as your God is qualitatively infinite in his own realm). This infinity can't be replicated in the same dimension (just as your God can't be replicated in his own realm).

See how fun it is to make up rules that suits one's purposes in a debate?



Again, I didn't see the distinction aside from phonetics and spelling. Please provide an argument that makes the case that there's an actual distinction (and not just in words) between changeless and immutable.



What made God intend to create rather than not create? If he was truly free, then he had equal probability of creating or not creating. So it was random intention. Otherwise, he was compelled to create this universe. You can't get away from the trap of proposing a creator entity with a mind.

I am not making up any rules, I am digging into the academic literature. Just because I raise points that people may not be familiar with does not mean that I am being arbitrary. It is a common mistake, both here and elsewhere to assume that theists have not thought out their position; or that we just paper over holes in our arguments and all that is needed is some brave internet activist to show up and point out where all the holes are.



But we can show that it cannot exist in this way by referring to logical possible worlds. In some world, your concoction could be the result of a contingent explanation. For example, one could postulate that God could create your universe generating mechanism. But being necessarily existent entails that it cannot be contingent in any possible world because a necessarily existent thing cannot fail to exist and have the property of 'necessity' in a possible world where logic applies; otherwise it obviously would not be necessary. We have been over this and you have no avoided my objection.



On the standard model our universe never had a beginning point and has existed in time for as long as time has existed; but you posit your universe generating force as an explanation for such a universe (remember you mentioned that time would exist in the created universe). So obviously this objection would not apply. As to a replication not being an accurate one because it would not be ontologically the same. Well it does not need to be, it only has to be functionally the same; if nothing about the copy is different, then you have no case as to why we should favor the view that it is necessarily existing.



Two objections; infinity does not entail that it cannot be ontologically distinct. Secondly the modal properties of a God mean that it cannot be replicated without contradiction; I gave you examples of how this would occur. The property of being able to make a universe in its own space and time does not lend itself to the necessity of a monopoly over this function. Also, my objection would stand even if there was no possible replication; because I made it not just through replication but also through logically possible worlds. So no you have not nearly escaped my objections. Instead you have described something, then changed what you are talking about and are now just laboring the case.



I have already done that (and provided a reference), If you want to see the ground work on the subject then it is in Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2001). or Thomas P. Flint and Alfred J. Freddoso, “Maximal Power,” in The Existence and Nature of God, ed. Alfred J. Freddoso (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 81-113.



Oh man, what??? I do not hold that choice is a random act and I see no reason to think that it ought to be treated as such.

You haven't made the case for why an entity that purportedly can be replicated must be contingent on something else for its existence. So long as you haven't done so, I'm going to reject your argument and consider it some rule made up for convenience sake.

True, I'm not a philosophical genius, but I don't think theistic philosophers are so perfect that they outclass atheistic philosophers in quality.



But we only have one actual world that exists, and in this actual world, my postulated entity is eternal and didn't need God for its existence.

I couldn't care less about hypothetical/theoretical worlds that don't exist. If they don't exist, then it doesn't matter what these non-existent worlds are like.

This just sounds like mental masturbation made by some theists to avoid the alternative explanations conundrum.



I don't think it's impossible for you to post a paragraph or something describing the distinction. And no, you haven't done anything to point out any actual difference between changeless and immutable. So please do when you get the chance.



Ok, let me make my case more clear.

1. God has free will.

2. Free will must entail equal probability between two (or more) choices in order to be free.

3. God's choice of creating is of equal probability as God's choice of not creating (from 1 & 2)

4. God's choice of creation was random. (from 3)

5. This universe was created by divine chance. (from 4)

6. God couldn't have used his mind to create this universe. (from 5)

7. God's mind is unnecessary for creation. (from 6)


And there you go. My postulation is more parsimonious than the postulation of your God as an explanation for the existence of the universe.

I may not be making the claim that you may think I am making. If something has the property of being contingent in any possible world it cannot be have the property of being necessarily existent in any possible world. The definition of a necessarily existing object is that it cannot fail to exist. There is a logically possible world, where there is not universe generator; it therefor cannot be necessarily existing.



Not really relevant, I am not proposing actual worlds, just logically possible worlds as a tried and true method of evaluating the modal properties of necessary existence; since modal properties must be logically consistent.



I have, please don't be too hard-headed about your argument. Part of getting an argument right is having it get smacked around by your peers. When we say something is change(less) it does not mean that it is incapable of change. When we say something is immutable, we claim that it cannot be changed. The literature I linked you to makes this distinction and works from those definitions because it uses them to illustrate what we mean by a de facto property (like my having black socks on today) from a modal property (like omnipotence... which is a modal property I do not posses). The terminology is not there to boggle you, but to point out subtle differences that we have reason to appreciate.



Ok, this is two arguments. Your argument is predicated on free will but not on a mind. I would also reject the argument's second and third premises. As I said previously will is not dependent on probability; in fact I would most likely argue that indeterminism is not free will. But basically it fails because the argument rejects the possibility that God has the power to chose to create more than one universe, there is no logical contradiction in postulating that God can have two possible universes and picking both; especially if they are of equal value. I could also reject, and I have previously the need for free will to be based on the principle of alternative possibilities. So I don't think this argument works for a multiple of reasons.

Don't take criticism to harshly, I have had my work trashed by Craig himself.