Move over here, we do not have them ;)

pelfdaddy wrote:Thomas,
I'll re-phrase that to: Apologists for religion taking issue with someone who has real expertise as if that expert does not understand their own data drive me FUCK KING NUTS.

Thanks

That sword slices two ways. Apologists against religion acting as though they are experts in things they are not (especially when dealing with an expert) are just as frustrating. How many skeptics here have no serious training in philosophy and Christian theology but still act as if they know more about those subjects than William Lane Craig (who holds a phd in each)?

zoon wrote:In the early nineteenth century Paley’s argument from design used good solid scientific evidence for god..."

If a theist said this, you can be sure many a poster here would object with ideas to the contrary.

Calilasseia wrote:Treat these "debates" as nothing more than an attempt by one individual to sell his made up shit as purportedly dictating how reality behaves, without bothering to ask if reality agrees, and the requisite word games become far more entertaining. Especially if the opponent realises this, and milks this for all its comedy worth.

Because at bottom, the sort of shite WLC peddles is only fit to be pointed and laughed at. How this charlatan managed to develop a lucrative career selling his shite, speaks volumes about the parlous state of the American arena of discourse. But of course, any arena of discourse that treats apologetics as something other than made up shit, is by definition crumbling and decrepit.

Is that part I bolded inflated speak, or do you believe that? The only way it could be "crumbling and decrepit" by definition is if apologetics were defined in way that spoke to its impoverishment. But the second you define Christian apologetics like that, you beg a question. Definitions should be neutral; they cannot be loaded with your contentious preconceptions.

Expat wrote:

zoon wrote:In the early nineteenth century Paley’s argument from design used good solid scientific evidence for god..."

If a theist said this, you can be sure many a poster here would object with ideas to the contrary.

Ah, the watchmaker analogy. Is there any other "good solid scientific evidence for God....?"

Zwaarddijk wrote:I have said it before, but I believe that William Lane Craig does not argue in order to convince anyone. I think he's playing a much more sinister game.

Observation 1: It's a human predilection to accept arguments that favour our own stance. Thus, if someone argued in favour of opinions I hold, I will accept his arguments with much less investigation into whether they are valid or not.

Observation 2: WLC's arguments are fairly bad. Often, they're so bad that the only way you could believe them is if you already are convinced of his conclusion.

Observation 3: It's a common point in Christian rhetoric that unbelievers hate god, or that they have consciously decided to reject the idea of God in 'rebellion'.

Observations 1 & 2 taken together lead to the situation where believers think they've just heard convincing vindication of their own beliefs, and a convincing rebuttal of the beliefs of the non-christian side. That, taken together with observation 3 leads to the conclusion that every non-believer in the room who was not convinced either genuinely hates god or at the very least suspend reason whenever god tries to reach them. Thus, they are Christ-haters.

The result of this is to widen the chasm between religious and non-religious people even more, a thing I think William L. Craig wants to do, as this means the believers will be less influenced by the non-believers and less willing to take anything we say at face value.

I've often said this: WLC debates, not to convince his opponent, nor even to convince non-believing spectators, but rather to reassure the believers that someone has actually given the tenets of their belief system some thought so they don't have to.

You would search for life-times to find a non-believer who converted because they were convinced by the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Furthermore, you would search long and hard for a believer who de-converted merely because the KCA has been soundly refuted.

Expat,

Thanks for chiming in to the thread. I see you are equating the dismissal of theological expertise by non-experts with the dismissal of scientific expertise by non-experts.

It bears repeating that theological expertise is non-existent in the sense that there is nothing to discover or to know about supernatural things, since verification and falsification are equally inaccessible. Fields of scientific and historical expertise feature actual methods of discovery that involve far more than the mere invention of suppositions.

Scott,

Not only are you correct, but the theologians and apologists themselves would find men like Martin Luther suspicious of their conversions. It's one thing to claim, in the course of debate, that the evidence led you to Christianity, but when you are hanging around with the Family of God after a lively church service, your brothers and sisters want to know how you were "born again", how the glory of God filled your darkened soul, how you came to accept your sinful condition, etc. They would walk away unimpressed if you filled their starving throats with ladles of watered-down apologetic soup.

I mean, what the fuck!

Yesterday I saw an exchange between Arif Ahmed and Bill Craig, in which Bill defended God's ability to be "the source of everything" and yet not be responsible for Evil. He said that Evil has no metaphysical property of positivity, that rather than being an actual "thing", it is merely the absence of Good.

Arif's response was that this was a word game. Good for him! He explained (paraphrasing), "If you accuse me of emptying the cookie jar, I could respond that emptiness has no positive quality; it is merely the privation of cookies."

Good answer, but all I could think was...

1--Bill is certain that Evil is a thing, because that's what Christians think. He even knows the name of the demonic being by whom Evil is personified!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The lying SHITBAG.

2--Since Bill's God is prepared to empty the hospitals of childhood leukemia victims, Bill is delinquent in hanging around Cambridge sparring rhetorically with the likes of Arif, when he should be laying hands on the sick and innocent. In the absence of this thrilling display of power, the piece of shit entertains his desperate viewers with the milquetoast, rambling assertion that God is the source of all things while not responsible for Evil because Evil has no positive metaphysical quality and is merely the absence of Good in the same way that cold is merely the absence of heat blah blah blah blah blah blah blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa FUCKING blah.

Damn these fucking debates. Help me Jesus!

Expat wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Treat these "debates" as nothing more than an attempt by one individual to sell his made up shit as purportedly dictating how reality behaves, without bothering to ask if reality agrees, and the requisite word games become far more entertaining. Especially if the opponent realises this, and milks this for all its comedy worth.

Because at bottom, the sort of shite WLC peddles is only fit to be pointed and laughed at. How this charlatan managed to develop a lucrative career selling his shite, speaks volumes about the parlous state of the American arena of discourse. But of course, any arena of discourse that treats apologetics as something other than made up shit, is by definition crumbling and decrepit.

Is that part I bolded inflated speak, or do you believe that? The only way it could be "crumbling and decrepit" by definition is if apologetics were defined in way that spoke to its impoverishment. But the second you define Christian apologetics like that, you beg a question. Definitions should be neutral; they cannot be loaded with your contentious preconceptions.

Please point to one piece of evidence that apologetics is something other than made up shit, particularly the sort peddled by people like WLC.

While I agree these "debates" are (or have become) pointless and repititious - they are usually framed more in the realm of entertainment than in the realm of settling anything or changing minds.
Also I still like to see Hitch's fine style.

What I still find it slightly interesting is that even genuinely clever xtians (like Lennox) still use the very familiar arguments by assertion - <maths only makes sense if there is a god...> - style of thing.

Expat wrote:

pelfdaddy wrote:Thomas,
I'll re-phrase that to: Apologists for religion taking issue with someone who has real expertise as if that expert does not understand their own data drive me FUCK KING NUTS.

Thanks

That sword slices two ways. Apologists against religion acting as though they are experts in things they are not (especially when dealing with an expert) are just as frustrating. How many skeptics here have no serious training in philosophy and Christian theology but still act as if they know more about those subjects than William Lane Craig (who holds a phd in each)?

Because WLC doesn't employ philosophy, he employs apologetics.
Really it kills me everytime to see there are still WLC fanboys.

Arnold Layne wrote:

Expat wrote:

zoon wrote:In the early nineteenth century Paley’s argument from design used good solid scientific evidence for god..."

If a theist said this, you can be sure many a poster here would object with ideas to the contrary.

Ah, the watchmaker analogy. Is there any other "good solid scientific evidence for God....?"

Yes, expat was carefully avoiding the part where I said that what used to be evidence for god is now evidence for evolution by natural selection. I was making the point that there's nothing inherently inconceivable about scientific evidence for gods, it's just that in the twenty-first century there isn't any.

zoon wrote:

Arnold Layne wrote:

Expat wrote:

zoon wrote:In the early nineteenth century Paley’s argument from design used good solid scientific evidence for god..."

If a theist said this, you can be sure many a poster here would object with ideas to the contrary.

Ah, the watchmaker analogy. Is there any other "good solid scientific evidence for God....?"

Yes, expat was carefully avoiding the part where I said that what used to be evidence for god is now evidence for evolution by natural selection. I was making the point that there's nothing inherently inconceivable about scientific evidence for gods, it's just that in the twenty-first century there isn't any.

Ah, he went quote mining, did he? How nice. I'm sorry, but had skipped some stuff and didn't see all your post. I agree with you!

I picture a scene where Jesus is about to judge someone who has recently departed this terrestrial plane, when the individual begins to answer for his life, thusly...

"I used to be a skeptic because I thought that among other things the Noah story was basically BS, y'know? But then I heard this guy named Lane Greg (or something) saying that infinity minus infinity leads to contradictions, so I knew the universe had to be finite, but he also said that this problem does not apply to God--you know, your dad--because he is BY DEFINITION infinite!"

Whereupon a chin-rubbing Jesus says, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I BELIEVE, man! That's what I'm talking about!"

"Uh...ok...sure, come on in."

THE END

(I talked to some paint that was drying, and he said that apologists bore the shit out of him.)

pelfdaddy wrote:Expat,

Thanks for chiming in to the thread. I see you are equating the dismissal of theological expertise by non-experts with the dismissal of scientific expertise by non-experts.

It bears repeating that theological expertise is non-existent in the sense that there is nothing to discover or to know about supernatural things, since verification and falsification are equally inaccessible. Fields of scientific and historical expertise feature actual methods of discovery that involve far more than the mere invention of suppositions.

I didn't equate the two, nor did I speak about a "dismissal". My point has nothing to do with their comparative merits or lack thereof. The point is this. Theology has its experts. We call them theologians. They are experts in theology whether theology is false or bunk, just as someone who is an expert in Chinese Traditional Medicine is an expert in that field even though it is likely a bunch of bunk. Because they are experts, we non-experts should take great caution in arguing with them about the meaning, implications and significance of their ideas, because they are obviously far more informed than we are about their study. This is the same principle used when we talk with physicists and whatever; and hence I say that the sword swings both ways. We can no more pretend to know more about some aspects of theology and philosophy than Craig (if we are non-experts) than Craig can pretend to know more about physics than physicists. Otherwise, we become hypocrites.

zoon wrote:

Arnold Layne wrote:

Expat wrote:

zoon wrote:In the early nineteenth century Paley’s argument from design used good solid scientific evidence for god..."

If a theist said this, you can be sure many a poster here would object with ideas to the contrary.

Ah, the watchmaker analogy. Is there any other "good solid scientific evidence for God....?"

Yes, expat was carefully avoiding the part where I said that what used to be evidence for god is now evidence for evolution by natural selection. I was making the point that there's nothing inherently inconceivable about scientific evidence for gods, it's just that in the twenty-first century there isn't any.

I didn't avoid it. It is just useless to me. Even here you admit my point, denying methodological naturalism and allowing for a God-hypothesis to possibly constitute science.

Expat,

Thanks once again for your explanation, but in one sense you have only repeated the same (I think slightly mistaken) point. Allow me to elucidate:

Of course I do not disagree with you that there are theologians who are better versed in scriptural teaching and specific doctrines than many a debating opponent with whom they might engage. That would be somewhere in the 'obvious' category. But without a rigorous, defensible, nay even detectable means of knowing theological "facts", theology remains a discipline without content, and its attendant apologetics mere range-of-the-moment responses drawn entirely from the imagination.

Lawrence Krauss knows less about specific Christian dogma than does John Lennox, but he knows just as much about God. This is because nobody knows anything about God. No preacher can tell a non-believing biologist about the supernatural because no preacher, and no biologist, has a means of knowing anything about the supernatural.

In short, theology and its associated apologetics, constitute a data-free enterprise. It's assertions all the way down within this enterprise.

pelfdaddy wrote: Of course I do not disagree with you that there are theologians who are better versed in scriptural teaching and specific doctrines than many a debating opponent with whom they might engage. That would be somewhere in the 'obvious' category.

Despite the fact that people here routinely act as if they know more about Christian scripture than Craig, talking about the meaning of this or that, contrary to what Craig states. I find that droll.

But without a rigorous, defensible, nay even detectable means of knowing theological "facts", theology remains a discipline without content, and its attendant apologetics mere range-of-the-moment responses drawn entirely from the imagination.

You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth here. You can't say it is a discipline without content and also say that theologians are better versed in scriptural teaching and specific doctrines. If they are better versed in these matters, then there has to be some good basis from which we can ascertain which is good theology and which is not.

Lawrence Krauss knows less about specific Christian dogma than does John Lennox, but he knows just as much about God. This is because nobody knows anything about God. No preacher can tell a non-believing biologist about the supernatural because no preacher, and no biologist, has a means of knowing anything about the supernatural.

If Craig were to teach someone about God, he is either using theology or philosophy.

If theology, he is either presuming that this person accepts Christian revelation or Craig is only teaching them what Christian theology says about God. The former presupposes that we can know something about God through scripture, the latter does not. Craig wouldn't tell a non-believer about God from the former position, because that presupposition wouldn't be shared. Instead, for the non-believer, Craig will tell him what Christian scripture says, and that's subject to historical fact. Either way, your position here doesn't make sense, and you're begging the question with the idea that we can't know God through scripture.

If Craig speaks from philosophy, but you respond that philosophy cannot offer knowledge about God, then you are, again, begging the question.