Calilasseia wrote:Oh lovely, the in tray is full again ...
Lion IRC wrote:I think the time machine scenario can be denied for the same reason as atheists reject the resurrection scenario.
Wrong. Not least because, as physicists have established, there exist solutions of Einstein's equations that include closed timelike loops, and within which, travel into the past is possible. See for example the Gödel metric, the Kerr metric (which models the space around a rotating black hole with zero net electrical charge) or the solutions for traversable wormholes. Which means we're not dealing with something materially impossible, because, for example, another metric, the BTZ Black Hole metric, is locally isometric to anti de Sitter space, which is a physically reasonable spacetime metric. Of course, in order to
realise some of these metrics, in order to generate the necessary closed timelike loops, we would need to be able to manipulate spacetime directly to an extent that is not yet possible, and in the case of traversable wormholes, there are strong quantum objections to the existence of macroscopic wormholes of the sort seen in science fiction (principally, the requirement of confinement of energy to narrow bands that are small multiples of the Planck length in width, and no means of achieving this is yet known). But, these solutions are
not inconsistent with relativistic physics, and as a direct corollary, are considered
physically realisable if the requisite conditions can be brought to bear upon the spacetime locally.
But once again, don't let actual
facts get in the way of your apologetics.
Lion IRC wrote:Presented with apparently conflicting evidence, the strong Christian is going to look for the "best explanation" why things didnt happen at the tomb as expected
In short, he's going to fall back upon mythologically derived presuppositions, and engage in apologetic fabrication to hand-wave away the embarrassing absence of real evidence. Where have we see this before? Oh, that's right, it's the standard supernaturalist
modus operandi.
Lion IRC wrote:especially if that person has stronger evidence that the time machine scenario cant be true.
Good luck overturning general relativity.
Lion IRC wrote:Did the time machine get the date right? Is the time machine just a virtual reality simulator? An Augmented Reality App? Are time machines - miraculous time machines - even possible?
See above. It'll only take you ten years to master the relevant mathematics in order to work out why time machines are, in principle, possible, even if there exist numerous, shall we say,
interesting physical constraints that we cannot yet overcome.
Plus,
since WLC accepted the premise by way of hypothesis, your apologetics is null and void in any case. Moreover, after accepting the premise, he then claimed that the complete absence of evidence for any "resurrection" would
not change his mind, and that he would still consider it to have happened, which means he's operating from a presuppositionalist standpoint. In short, he's treating presumptions as conclusions, and unsupported blind assertions as purportedly constituting fact.
Lion IRC wrote:Yes, yes. I understand it's a pretend scenario.
Do you understand that the reaction I proposed to that
pretend scenario was ALSO speculation?
One valid reaction in trying to best explain what one was observing could be that the time machine got the date wrong.
Not difficult to check that, though, is it? Namely, bring an Aramaic speaker with you, and have that Aramaic speaker ask appropriate questions of the locals, such as "did the Romans crucify anyone in the vicinity recently?" Plus, if scientists ever found out how to build a genuine, macroscopically functioning time machine, I think they could be relied upon to impart some
precision to the machine in question.
Lion IRC wrote:It could also be possible and quite reasonable to speculate about alternative sum-over-history realities in which the time machine was not "really" visiting the same point in space/time but one reserved by God for smart aleck's with hypothetical time machines?
In other words, you're presupposing in advance that your magic man exist, and somehow fixes things so that empirical investigation of the sort described above is prevented. Which makes your magic man a deceiver on a cosmic scale. Do you really want to worship an entity that turns the entire universe into a gigantic lie? I know that creationists are quite happy to do this, but then creationism merely brings the aetiology of supernaturalism into sharp relief.
Meanwhile, addressing this:
Lion IRC wrote:Xeno wrote:He will not debate validity of the bible because he takes any part of it as true but does not wish to get caught explaining that.
For example, genocide is not genocide if god ordered it, besides, those to be killed were told to leave first, besides, not all of them died, besides, the infants who were killed went straight to heaven and the rest deserved what they got.
OK?
Even if God orders it, it's still genocide.
Which means, at a stroke, you cannot claim that you obtain your ethical knowledge from this entity. Because in the above statement, you are manifeslty applying
criteria external to your mythology to the situation, and you are using those criteria to arrive at an ethical judgement.
Lion IRC wrote:Where on earth do you get the idea that William Lane Craig is unwilling to defend or debate his views about the validity of the bible?
Returning to the time machine scenario ...
Lion IRC wrote:quas wrote:Okay, let's pretend that the time machine work as intended and did not get the date wrong and did not visit an alternate universe or something of that sort. Any more objection?
Yes.
While sitting there in the time machine staring at what quas wants you to think is THE tomb, you are missing all the OTHER post-resurrection sightings of Jesus everywhere else.
Like I said, we can address this simply. Bring along an Aramaic speaker to ask appropriate questions of the locals. If there's sufficient passenger space, bring several. Equip them with various pieces of equipment that they can keep concealed, such as voice recorders or miniature video cameras, so that the evidence can be reviewed properly. Indeed, we can arrange for a battery of sensors to be aimed at the tomb in question.
Of course, the moment the capability to engage in this exercise exists, we have a couple of issues to address beforehand, such as the possibility of some of Craig's fanboys gaining access to the technology, and heading off on an expedition to fabricate "evidence" for their presuppositions. Wouldn't be the first time supernaturalists tried to fake evidence to support their mythology-based fantasies. See, for example, the hilarity that is Russell Humphreys' zircons nonsense, in which he tried to claim that helium in zircons supported a young Earth, but
altered the diffusion mechanics of the zircons in question by placing them in a vacuum in order to force-fit the result to his presuppositions, when real zircons are subject at depth to 250 atmospheres of surrounding pressure. He also manipulated the data from a Soviet geophysicist in order to force-fit the data to his religious presuppositions. More on this at
great length
here.
Lion IRC wrote:Besides, why the need for
an elaborate magical mystery tour in your pretend atheist
debunkermobile?
If you want to play pretend, wouldnt it be just be easier for Mark Smith to say to William Lane Craig...
..."
close your eyes and pretend the Resurrection never happened..."
Congratulations on missing the point
entirely. Not least because Craig himself is willing to erect hypothetical scenarios in order to push his apologetics. The
whole point of the hypothetical scenario presented to Craig, which, I add,
he accepted by way of hypothesis, was to determine his position, and it performed this service more than adequately, revealing that Craig doesn't really care about evidence, even less so when it happens not to genuflect before his presuppositions.
Craig openly admitted, when this hypothetical situation was put to him, that he would continue believing in his mythology and its assertions, even if compelling evidence was presented to him that those assertions were false. Which means that he is, as one of the other posters in this thread has stated, nothing more than a practitioner of rhetorical masturbation.
Lion IRC wrote:Not
every disciple needed to see the holes in Jesus' hands.
Well this constitutes presuming your conclusion in advance, doesn't it? Namely, you're presuming in the above that the event in question actually happened, which, in case you hadn't worked this out, is
one of the presumptions arising from your mythology that is being questioned.
Lion IRC wrote:It is possible to get to a point where you say...OK I think I have enough evidence now to make a decision. And the weight of evidence persuades on balance.
Exactly
what evidence is there to support what is, after all, a grand exercise in magic?
Lion IRC wrote:The alternative could be an endless "court case" where defence and prosecution spend all day saying...
that's not evidence/yes it is/no it's not/is too/is not.
Ah, it's
this tiresome apologetic fabrication again, whose sole intent is to eliminate even basic evidential standards, in order to allow blind assertion and yet more apologetic fabrication to become purportedly "admissible". You keep trying to introduce this game, but no one here is playing.
Lion IRC wrote:The suggestion that "...
William Lane Craig claims that he has no need for evidence.." is dubious.
Oh really? He has
explicitly stated as much. You've already had two examples presented above, viz:
"As long as reason is minister of the Christian faith, Christians should adhere to it."
Translation: "The moment reason disagrees with our faith, abandon it".
"We can know the truth, whether we have rational arguments or not."
Translation: "Whatever we make up to prop up our presuppositions counts, because our presuppositions are right, end of story".
Lion IRC wrote:No
further evidence perhaps.
Or no scientistic, empirical, God-under-a-microscope type evidence perhaps.
But I simply dont think that it can be properly said of someone like him that he has no need for evidence.
Oh, you want another admission of his? Try this one:
I think Martin Luther correctly distinguished between what he called the magisterial and ministerial uses of reason. The magisterial use of reason occurs when reason stands over and above the gospel like a magistrate and judges it on the basis of argument and evidence. The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel…. Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter.
In other words, his position consists of "if reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right".
Lion IRC wrote:We
can know the truth, whether we have rational arguments or not. Thats not controversial. Thats not double-speak.
Really? Here's one for you to ponder on. Stand in the middle of a room, facing one wall. Rotate on the spot through 360°, so that you're facing the same wall after that rotation. Are you in the same orientation as you were before the rotation? You might find the answer surprising.
Lion IRC wrote:Thats a plain reality.
Actually, I've just introduced you to something above, which if you think about it carefully, is actually a fair way distant from being intuitive. I'll let you work out why this is the case.
Lion IRC wrote:It's quite possible for rational arguments to produce false conclusions.
Actually, I think you'll find, more correctly, that it's possible for rational arguments to produce
nonsense conclusions, if the premises thereof are themselves nonsense. It's one of the reasons I take issue with some of Craig's weak apologetic attempts to conjure up his magic man through incorrect application of propositional logic, about which I've posted on numerous occasions. Plus, in the case of material conditionals
sensu Quine, a true antecedent followed by a false consequent renders the entire material conditional false, and therefore destroys any implication that one might wish to derive from that material conditional.
Lion IRC wrote:It's quite possible for empirical evidence to point to something which later turns out not to be true.
If you're attempting to use the transition from Newton to Einstein to try and open up a specious gap for your magic man, don't bother. Because, wait for it, the Einstein formulation tells us
why the Newtonian formulation appeared to be so successful for so long, namely, that the error arising from using the Newtonian formulation is so small, at everyday speeds and in weak gravitational fields, that even today, it requires specialised and expensive laboratory apparatus to measure it. Specifically, the Lorentz gamma function is extremely close to 1 under such conditions, which means that the error is of the order of 10
-15, which requires effort to measure even with 21st century technology, and was totally beyond the remit of 17th century physicists. But because that error
is so tiny, Newtonian formulations are
still useful in situations where 15 decimal places of precision are not required, because they are conceptually simpler to understand than relativistic fomulations, and are both algebrically and computationally simpler. One tends not to need to delve into four-dimensional Minkowskian tensors to build the average brick house, for example.
Lion IRC wrote:One thing I would like to say about Mr Craig is that although his name comes up OFTEN in this forum and he is a proponent of religious views with which I happen to strongly agree, it is only by happenstance that I find myself defending the fact that he holds those views. I would defend
anyone whose view I shared who was being attacked for holding those same views.
Even if it was demonstrated to you that those views were
wrong?Lion IRC wrote:He is a big target for atheists but that doesn’t mean that
every Christian in here who, (because we share a common doctrine,) happens to agree with WLC
You seem to think we're not aware of this. You might try reading some of our posts sometime.
However, the problem is that WLC
wields influence in the USA, an influence that is widely regarded to be wholly disproportionate to the robustness of his apologetics. People listen to him because they think he's some sort of guru on the subject, when in reality, most of his so-called "arguments" have been demolished on repeated occasions. He's basically a practitioner of apologetic showmanship, engaging in duplicitous discoursive sleight of hand to fool the gullible.
Lion IRC wrote:- as against the counter-apologist, is part of some WLC fan club.
What makes you think that those who regard his apologetics as hogwash, are "fans" of his in any way, shape or form? See above.
Lion IRC wrote:He certainly doesn’t need any help defending his position against ideological attacks from atheists. He can do that by himself.
We've seen his idea of "defence". Namely erection of strawman caricatures, thinly veiled
ad hominem, and duplicitous bait and switch operations.
Lion IRC wrote:In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he cringed at some of the amateur, folk-style AvT apologists like me and secretly wished his name wasn’t ever mentioned by ppl like us lest we be mistaken as part of something
exactly like a fan club.
Well he doesn't seem to feel the need to cringe when displaying discoursive dishonesty on a grand scale, as Lawrence Krauss found out the hard way.
Lion IRC wrote:I assert that the only situation in which a person (like WLC) would claim, as you suggest, that they had no need for evidence would be one in which they ALREADY rationally thought they had sufficient persuasive evidence.
You really don't understand proper discourse, do you Lion? Here's a clue for you: presuming your conclusions, then fabricating whatever shit happens to make you feel warm and fuzzy as a substitute for genuine evidential support, doesn't constitute proper discourse.
Lion IRC wrote:William Lane Craig isn't unique among Christians in this regard. Nor does he claim to be.
That's the sad part - he isn't unique. The USA is littered with professional rhetoricians, prostituting their gifts in pursuit of mythological nonsense.
Lion IRC wrote:There's been billions of Christians who have said exactly that - I have all the evidence I need and nothing you can say or scream or do or threaten to do - no trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword, neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will separate me from the love of Christ. (See Romans 8)
In other words, the position you describe consists of "I won't change my mind even if Magic Man himself comes down and says I'm wrong".
Lion IRC wrote:I think the problem is with the atheist who is frustrated at their own inability to persuade - their inability to refute.
In your dreams.
Lion IRC wrote:Ihavenofingerprints wrote:FFS Lion. William Lane Craig specifically said, that if he went back in time and saw no resurrection occur, he would still believe in the resurrection because of some personal experience he has with the holy spirit. He'd just put it down to God testing his faith or some horseshit.
Quas rightly points this out. There is no argument to be had. WLC is will believe his religion whether or not the evidence supports it. Therefore a debate with him is pointless.
Yes, putting it down to
God testing your faith is another possible pretend scenario.
Except that it isn't a "pretend scenario", it's one that quite a few of your fellow supernaturalists assert to be the case, when reality happens to differ from doctrine. Such as those creationists who claim that their magic man put the fossils there to "test their faith".
Lion IRC wrote:Add that to the
...time machine got the date wrong... time machine just a virtual reality simulator... Augmented Reality App? ...alternative sum-over-history realities in which the time machine was not "really" visiting the same point in space/time but one reserved by God for smart aleck's with hypothetical time machines.. scenarios.
Already addressed these above.
Lion IRC wrote:It is
just a pretend scenario remember.
Yet, despite the fact that the existence of a time machine has more going for it than the magic "resurrection" in your mythology (i.e., there exist numerous relativistic formulations demonstrating that the existence of a time machine is consistent with known physics, if the appropriate space-time metric exists, whereas nothing of the sort exists for the assertions of your mythology in this vein), you choose to try and ridicule the idea that has some support from the world of physics, whilst trying to prop up a mythological assertion that, on the basis of actual
evidence, is pure fantasy.
Lion IRC wrote:An elaborate magical mystery tour in a pretend atheist
debunkermobile?
Once again, see above. You might like to learn some of the relevant physics before posting this drivel again.
Plus, the purpose of the hypothetical scenario has been fulfilled, namely, to demonstrate that WLC's position consists, at bottom, of "if reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right".
Meanwhile, addressing this:
Zwaarddijk wrote:I don't believe he wants to convince any unbeliever. I believe he wants to make us look even worse in the eyes of believers - he wants to widen the chasm between believers and unbelievers. If believers can befriend unbelievers, there's a risk they'll learn and fall.
If, however, they get convinced the unbelievers have elected to ignore truth, they are less likely to befriend them. Who would befriend someone that refuses to acknowledge obvious truths (and such central ones at that as Jesus!) ? Simply put, he's not even preaching to the choir - the choir's heard the same stuff before. He's making a show out of how the non-members of the choir are terrible, unrepentant and unsalvageable God-haters. Don't befriend the unbelievers, he demonstrates to the believers, or you may start denying obvious truths yourself.
IIRC he's even admitted that this is one of his intentions. So participating in debates with him is just providing him with more fuel to the fire.
This is also why he won't be consistent and sticking to logic - it never was his fucking intention from the very outset, he just wants to make us look bad.
Indeed, it's standard doctrine centred world-view practice - demonise those who happen not to conform to the doctrine in question, and erect apologetic fabrications to the effect that said non-conformity, instead of possibly being the result of
actual critical thinking on the subject, is actually the product of wilful malice. I've discussed the aetiology on several occasions.
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