Is William Lane Craig going to debate anyone this year? He shouldn't be allowed in any debates. He shouldn't be allowed in the first place, and he shouldn't be allowed to debate anymore.

Here's why:
He's immune to reason.
With Murshid's help, I've collected all the evidence to prove that Craig has no regards for reason.

EVIDENCE #1:
From this website: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=2931

Mark Smith (atheist) confirmed Craig’s position when he asked:

Dr. Craig, for the sake of argument let’s pretend that a time machine gets built. You and I hop in it, and travel back to the day before Easter, 33 AD. We park it outside the tomb of Jesus. We wait. Easter morning rolls around, and nothing happens. We continue to wait. After several weeks of waiting, still nothing happens. There is no resurrection- Jesus is quietly rotting away in the tomb.

Craig told him he would still believe in the resurrection of Jesus, due to the “self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit.”

EVIDENCE #2:

Here's from the debate between Craig and Arif Ahmed. In Ahmed's opening statement, he quoted three passages from Craig's book 'Reasonable Faith'. These are the three passages:

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith wrote:
"As long as reason is minister of the Christian faith, Christians should adhere to it."

"We can know the truth, whether we have rational arguments or not."

"Even though we are given no good reason to believe, and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve, even then the disbeliever has no excuse. Because the ultimate reason he does not believe is that he has rejected deliberately God's holy spirit."

What he is saying is that even if you are persuaded by evidence to become a non-believer, you are wrong because you have deliberately rejected the holy spirit, and he is right because the holy spirit told him so. In short, he just knows that Christianity is true.

You can listen to Arif Ahmed's opening statement here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DekcJ79wvNc&t=7m38s

EVIDENCE #3:
I also find the following video from Youtube.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-fDyPU3wlQ[/youtube]
Click the image above, watch on Youtube, if video doesn't play here.

Or you can read the transcript:

PART I:

Interviewer:
What advice would you give to someone who's experiencing serious doubts?

William Lane Craig:
First of all, I think they need to understand the proper relationship between faith and reason. The way and which that I know Christianity is true is, first and foremost, on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. This gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true, wholly apart from the evidence. And, therefore, if in some historically contigent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I don't think that contraverts the witness of the Holy Spirit. In such a situation, I should regard that as simply the result of the contigent circumstance that I am in, and that if I were to pursue this with due diligence and with time I would discover that—if I can get the correct picture— the evidence would support exactly what the witness of the Holy Spirit tells me. So, I think that's very important to get the relationship between faith and reason right, otherwise—what that means is—our faith is dependent upon the shifting sands of evidence and arguments which change from person to person, place to place and generation to generation; whereas the holy spirit in his testimony gives every generation and every person immediate access to the knowledge of God and the truth of Christianity that's independent of the shifting sands of time, place, person or historical contigency.

Maybe with due diligence and with TIME, he would have available to him the evidence that the Earth is 6,000 years old?

PART II:

William Lane Craig:
Secondly, what I think follows from that-what this means is that- doubt is never simply an intellectual problem, there is always a spiritual dimension to doubt as well. There is an enemy of your souls, Satan, who hates you intensely and who is bent on your destruction and who will do everything in his power to see that your faith is destroyed.

And, therefore, when we have this intellectual doubts and problems, we should never look at them as something that is spiritually-neutral or divorced them from spiritual conflict that we're involved in, rather we need to take these doubts to God in prayer, to admit them honestly, to talk to our Christian friends about them, to not stuff them or hide them. We need to deal with them openly and honestly, to talk to people about them and seek God's help. I think, frankly, no human being in this lifetime will ever have all his questions answered. There's always going to be a question bag on the shelf of unanswered questions that we haven't had time to deal with in this lifetime. So, the key to having victory in the Christian life is not having all your questions answered. The key to victory is how to live with unanswered questions. That's the real key. How do you allow answered questions not to become destructive doubts and I think part of the secret to that would be by cultivating your spiritual life, engaging in spiritual disciplines: prayers, christian music, sharing your faith, etc.

So there will always be unanswered questions, but because the Holy Spirit lives in his heart, William Lane Craig will always already know the answers to the questions that will always be unanswered.

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I think the time machine scenario can be denied for the same reason as atheists reject the resurrection scenario.

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 - especially if that person has stronger evidence that the time machine scenario cant be true.

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?

Terminal grasping.

Lion IRC wrote:I think the time machine scenario can be denied for the same reason as atheists reject the resurrection scenario.

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 - especially if that person has stronger evidence that the time machine scenario cant be true.

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?

"FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, let's pretend that a time machine is built..."



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I didn't think much of Craig until I watched some random clips of him saying something like he's not here to debate the validity of the Bible(I think he said it in an interview as well, but not certain), which I thought was bullshit since a Christian's belief resides in the Bible not a washed up cosmological argument stolen from an Islamic spin doctor. The theists who try to champion this rhetorical masturbater make me sick; they get empowered by his arguments, ignore the refutations, and act like the Christian god has been proven beyond a doubt.

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?

quas wrote:

Lion IRC wrote:I think the time machine scenario can be denied for the same reason as atheists reject the resurrection scenario.

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 - especially if that person has stronger evidence that the time machine scenario cant be true.

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?

"FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT, let's pretend that a time machine is built..."



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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.

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?

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?

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.

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?

Lion IRC wrote:Even if God orders it, it's still genocide.

William Lane Craig disagrees on his 'Reasonable Faith' website.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5767

My favorite bit from that page:

Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

Poor, poor Ted Bundy!

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.

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..."

Lion IRC wrote: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..."

Consider that done! If you examine evidence #2 and #3, William Lane Craig claims that he has no need for evidence, he might even go against the evidence.

Not every disciple needed to see the holes in Jesus' hands. 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.

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.

The suggestion that "...William Lane Craig claims that he has no need for evidence.." is dubious.

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.

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.

William Lane Craig is the master of double-speak. His website and his most famous book is titled "Reasonable Faith", suggests that he holds reason in high regard. But in his very book, he claims he has no need for reason. "We can know the truth, whether we have rational arguments or not." On public debates against atheists, he will claim that he is very much rational and evidence-based, but when pressed on, he will admit that he has no need for evidence, as he has already known the truth.

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith wrote:Not every disciple needed to see the holes in Jesus' hands. 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.

Which way the balance swings to depends on whether or not you have a priori accepted God.

"Even though we are given no good reason to believe, and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve, even then the disbeliever has no excuse. Because the ultimate reason he does not believe is that he has rejected deliberately God's holy spirit."

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.

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.

Link already provided by quas.

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?

Here:

Lockon-Stratos wrote:... I watched some random clips of [Craig] saying something like he's not here to debate the validity of the Bible(I think he said it in an interview as well, but not certain)

Taking those words at face value, I responded to them with likely reasons, not making a separate claim

Get out of bed earlier, Lion.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:He'd just put it down to God testing his faith or some horseshit.

Which Lion already said earlier.

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?

Of course, there's something extremely hilarious about this line of reasoning. It's like Young Earth Creationist who claims that Satan planted dinosaur fossils to trick us into believing that evolution happened and the earth is older than 6,000 years old, EXCEPT... instead of saying that Satan planted the false evidence, God did it Himself!

quas wrote:

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.

William Lane Craig is the master of double-speak. His website and his most famous book is titled "Reasonable Faith", suggests that he holds reason in high regard. But in his very book, he claims he has no need for reason. "We can know the truth, whether we have rational arguments or not." On public debates against atheists, he will claim that he is very much rational and evidence-based, but when pressed on, he will admit that he has no need for evidence, as he has already known the truth.

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith wrote:Not every disciple needed to see the holes in Jesus' hands. 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.

Which way the balance swings to depends on whether or not you have a priori accepted God.

"Even though we are given no good reason to believe, and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve, even then the disbeliever has no excuse. Because the ultimate reason he does not believe is that he has rejected deliberately God's holy spirit."

We can know the truth, whether we have rational arguments or not. Thats not controversial. Thats not double-speak.
Thats a plain reality. It's quite possible for rational arguments to produce false conclusions. It's quite possible for empirical evidence to point to something which later turns out not to be true.

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.

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 - as against the counter-apologist, is part of some WLC fan club.

He certainly doesn’t need any help defending his position against ideological attacks from atheists. He can do that by himself. 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.

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.

William Lane Craig isn't unique among Christians in this regard. Nor does he claim to be.

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)

I think the problem is with the atheist who is frustrated at their own inability to persuade - their inability to refute.

Lion IRC wrote:We can know the truth, whether we have rational arguments or not. Thats not controversial. Thats not double-speak.
Thats a plain reality. It's quite possible for rational arguments to produce false conclusions. It's quite possible for empirical evidence to point to something which later turns out not to be true.

You can BELIEVE the truth without rational arguments, that's called blind guessing. You can't KNOW the truth without rational arguments. To KNOW something you need to be able to TEST or demonstrate it.

Please list 1 thing you KNOW exists, but need no rational argument for.


We wont hold our breath though.

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.

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.

It is just a pretend scenario remember.

An elaborate magical mystery tour in a pretend atheist debunkermobile?