Posted: Jul 29, 2011 3:50 pm
THWOTH wrote:And yet is it not the personage for which Dr Craig is arguing - unless he, and other religious sophists, are to argue for that which they acknowledged they do not or cannot know?
They claim they do know. And they're giving arguments for this claim.
So the Kalam program is only really half an argument, at best, and running it, and even accepting it for the sake of argument, still leaves us no closer to demonstrating the veracity of the claim that God exists such that He necessarily fulfils the ascribed role of all-knowing, regression terminating, personal creator of all that is etc,.
How can you not be God and yet be a regression terminator, personal creator of the universe? You're not making any sense.
If theistic philosophers must know what God is such that He/it can fit the deitific role ascribed to him then surely they cannot argue for His apparent logical necessity without first demonstrating that He has to be exactly the kind of entity that He is claimed to be - unless, that is, God is just to be 'all things to all men' as the saying goes?
God is by definition such an entity. It's the same way bachelor is by definition an unmarried man.
When Dr Craig is pressed on this matter of demonstrating his knowledge of God he relies on the tabernacular syllogism that fundamentally he just knows that God exists and that Christianity if therefore true by the witness of the holy spirit in his heart. And so all his declarations amount to a plea that 'you simply must believe me because I am totally sincere about the veracity of my declarations,' or more broadly to his religious inclined constituency the plea that 'Faith is justified even if it is not justifiable, so stick with it guys.'
If true, a peculiar trivia at best; however, this isn't a topic about Craig's personality.