The William Lane Craig Debunking Thread

[Laurens]

William Lane Craig is probably the person most referred to by Christian Apologists. Richard Dawkins has been called a coward for not wishing to debate him, and other debaters have been caught out by his devious bullshit apologetics. I thought he deserved a topic dedicated to debunking the rubbish that he spouts, as it may be a valuable resource for anyone challenged to rebuke his claims.

Here's a list of Craig's 5 arguments:

1. Kalam Cosmological Argument

2. Fine Tuning Argument

3. Objective Moral Values

4. Resurrection of Jesus Christ

5. Personal Experience of God

----

I thought I'd start by posting a couple of debates where WLC doesn't quite get away with his shit...

Debate with Bart Ehrman:


Debate with Shelly Kagan:


Debate with Arif Ahmed:
http://www.brianauten.com/Apologetics/craig-ahmed-debate.mp3 [audio]

And a couple of articles:

Dealing with William Lane Craig - Lawrence Krauss: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/612104-dealing-with-william-lane-craig
Quentin Smith debunks Craig 'Why the Big Bang is No Help to Theists': http://www.mukto-mona.com/science/physics/bigbang_no_help_smith.htm

So post your own rebuttals to his arguments, or links to decent rebuttals or debates. Hopefully we can get some kind of archive built up as a resource for dealing with the devious little scrotum bag they call William Lane Craig...

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

I really have no interest in debunking already almost over-debunked claims. Lots of more informed, better educated people have published well organized, intelligent arguments that completely pwn religious claims. There's no point in repeating them, assuming one doesn't have anything new to say...

 

[Laurens]

I really have no interest in debunking already almost over-debunked claims. Lots of more informed, better educated people have published well organized, intelligent arguments that completely pwn religious claims. There's no point in repeating them, assuming one doesn't have anything new to say...

I see where you're coming from. I do however feel that William Lane Craig is viewed by a lot of theists as somehow defeating a lot of major atheists and if a theist were to stumble upon a collection of links and videos etc, exposing his bullshit in a topic such as this they might reconsider their opinion of him.

You know things like the bullshit rumour going around that Richard Dawkins is a coward, and doesn't want to debate WLC because he knows he can't win or something. I feel like he needs addressing

 

[Prolescum]

As the fat-free one says, pointless tasking yourself with something done to death; I think even AndromedasWake has tackled this chump.

 

[BlackLight]

Well, with Craig, what he often does is employ some rather high-school level debating tactics. In his debate with Hitchens, we see this quite clearly. He immediately attempts to force the debate to exist only on his terms. "You must answer each of my 5 proofs for God, tear each of them down, AND build up something in its place." Of course, he knows that atheism is itself a claim of non-belief in the positive assertion of God, and has no burden to posit an alternative worldview other than the absence of a God/Creator. Craig's entire debate strategy depends largely his audience's willingness to view the debate on the parameters he sets up. Sadly, they often do.

Having said that, in the order that they appear:

1). Cosmological Argument: Even if we concede the point that the Universe must've had a Beginner, that concession only takes you as far as a Deistic God. You simply can't get to Christian Theism from simply agreeing that the Universe had a Creator.

We don't NEED to concede this point, of course. But the disadvantage the atheist has here is that all the scientific explanations for the Universe's origins tend to be very complicated, requiring some pretty advanced understanding of physics and quantum theory. Most educated people don't have that, to say nothing of the sort of people not inclined to give a full hearing to ideas that contradict a Divine Creator. In fact, quantum theory is so abstract and odd, that someone trying to explain Cosmology on those terms can easily (if falsely) be accused of the sort of making the sort of presuppositions that theists engage in all the time.

2). Fine Tuning Argument: Two ways to go here, in my judgment. The first is the most obvious - neither the Universe, nor our planet, is fine-tuned for our existence, but merely adequately-tuned for it. Hitchens demolishes the FTA quite plainly whenever he talks about it. From the sheer amount of waste we see in the Universe (stars exploding about once per second), to the knife-edge we live on just in our planet (climatic chaos, earthquakes, natural disasters). This is not fine-tuning. And if it is, what does it say about the Fine-Tuner?

The 2nd way to go might be to point out that the FTA is effectively a circular argument. It presupposes that humanity is special. You can't begin with that assumption in this argument, because it's a consequence of the conclusion you're trying to get to. Theists claim that if various Universal constants were altered even slightly, we would not be here. To which a proper atheist replies, "So what? Then we wouldn't be here." The reason why this argument carries any weight with a theist is because they're beginning the FTA having reached the conclusion that humanity is special. If you dismiss this assumption, the fine-tuning in the Universal constants isn't impressive it all. It just us getting lucky, that's all - not getting divinely inspired.

3). Objective Moral Values: I used to make the point that we don't have objective morality, but this is fairly shaky. I've read a good amount of Sam Harris on the subject, and I think his theory works pretty well. But if you don't have that handy, I would simply point out that if the Bible is the Word of the God that gives us our morality, I doubt we'd still be here. God endorses some pretty repellent ideas. If you don't endorse the Harris school of thought of this, you could just point out that God and religion and Christianity were the basis for what was right and wrong, there's little chance we'd still be around to talk about it.

4).Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Lot of implied statistics and word-play. He says something like "a majority of New Testament historians" believe in certain facts about the Resurrection that suggest it actually happened. No citation for how large this 'majority' is, no explanation of what a 'New Testament historian' is or who these people are. Were they, possibly, Christians? Would a Christian accept the contemporary scholarship atheistic historians if "a majority" of them concluded that Jesus did not rise from the dead?

5). Personal Experience of God: In a way, this just shows how much Craig is willing to stack the deck in his own favor. He has often acknowledged that his own personal experience for God can't work as a debate argument for God's existence. And indeed it doesn't. But then he turns around and repeats his opening statement - to defeat Christian theism, you need to tear down all 5 arguments (even the one he just admitted wasn't really an argument), and build up 5 news ones in its place.

If you really wanted to engage this point, you might mention that if the believer had been born in Afghanistan and felt that "personal experience," he'd be attributing it to Allah. And it would be the same for all the other beliefs and their corresponding Gods. You can concede that they felt "something," and they may be logically inclined to attribute the source of that feeling to their God, but that does nothing to prove that it's actually God causing their "personal experience." Nor, if it did, would it prove it was their God that was the true one.

 

[Demojen]

Well, with Craig, what he often does is employ some rather high-school level debating tactics. In his debate with Hitchens, we see this quite clearly. He immediately attempts to force the debate to exist only on his terms. "You must answer each of my 5 proofs for God, tear each of them down, AND build up something in its place." Of course, he knows that atheism is itself a claim of non-belief in the positive assertion of God, and has no burden to posit an alternative worldview other than the absence of a God/Creator. Craig's entire debate strategy depends largely his audience's willingness to swallow that. Sadly, they often do.

Having said that, in the order that they appear:

1). Cosmological Argument: Even if we concede the point that the Universe must've had a Beginner, that concession only takes you as far as a Deistic God. You simply can't get to Christian Theism from simply agreeing that the Universe had a Creator.

We don't NEED to concede this point, of course. But the disadvantage the atheist has here is that all the scientific explanations for the Universe's origins tend to be very complicated, requiring some pretty advanced understanding of physics and quantum theory. Most educated people don't have that, to say nothing of the sort of people not inclined to give a full hearing to ideas that contradict the idea of a Creator creating the Universe. In fact, quantum theory is so abstract and odd, that someone trying to explain Cosmology on those terms can easily (if falsely) be accused of the sort of making the sort of presuppositions that theists engage in all the time.

2). Fine Tuning Argument: Two ways to go here, in my judgment. The first is the most obvious - neither the Universe, nor our planet, is fine-tuned for our existence, but merely adequately tuned for it. Hitchens demolishes this idea quite plainly whenever he talks about it. From the sheer about of waste we see in the Universe (stars exploding about once per second), to the knife-edge we live on just in our planet (climatic chaos, earthquakes, disease). This is not fine-tuning. And if it is, what does it say about the fine-tuner?

The 2nd way to go might be to point out that the FTA is effectively a circular argument. It presupposes that humanity is special. You can't begin with that assumption in this argument, because it's a consequence of the conclusion you're trying to get to. Theists claim that various Universal constants were altered even slightly, we would not be here. To which a proper atheist replies, "So what? Then we wouldn't be here." The reason why this argument carries any weight with a theist is because they're beginning the FTA having reached the conclusion that humanity is special. If you dismiss this assumption, the fine-tuning in the Universal constants isn't impressive it all. It just us getting lucky, that's all - not divinely inspired.

3). Objective Moral Values: I used to make the point that we don't have objective morality, but this is fairly shaky. I've read a good amount of Sam Harris on the subject, and I think his theory works pretty well. But if you don't have that handy, I would simply point out that if the Bible is the Word of the God that gives us our morality, I doubt we'd still be here. God endorses some pretty repellent ideas. If you don't endorse the Harris school of thought of this, you could just point out that God and religion and Christianity were the basis for what was right and wrong, there's little chance we'd still be around to talk about it.

4).Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Lot of implied statistics and word-play. He says something like "a majority of New Testament historians" believe in certain facts about the Resurrection that suggest it actually happen. No citation for how large this 'majority' is, no explanation of what a 'New Testament historian' is or who these people are. Were they, possibly, Christians? Would a Christian accept the contemporary scholarship for a majority of atheistic historians if "a majority" of them concluded that Jesus did not rise from the dead?

5). Personal Experience of God: In a way, this just shows how much Craig is willing to stack the deck in his own favor. He has often acknowledged that his own personal experience for God can't work as a debate argument for God's existence. And indeed it doesn't. But then he turns around and repeats his opening statement - to defeat Christian theism, you need to tear down all 5 arguments (even the one he just admitted wasn't really an argument), and build up 5 news ones in its place.

If you really wanted to engage this point, you might mention that if the believer had been born in Afghanistan and felt that "personal experience," he'd be attributing it to Allah. And it would be the same for all the other beliefs and their corresponding Gods. You can concede that they felt "something," and they may be logically inclined to attribute the source of that feeling to their God, but that does nothing to prove that it's their God that's the true one.

*looks around at everyone else*

What he said.

 

[RedYellow]

3. Objective Moral Values

It occurs to me that, in arguing for the existence of objective moral values, the apologist must actually argue against them. You see, the theist's main point is always that the existence of moral values is contingent upon the existence of God. This is not the same thing as saying moral values are objective, because if they were truly objective they wouldnt depend on God to exist. You can catch them making the same error in saying that human life has intrinsic value IF God exists. This makes no sense, because if human life is intrinsically valuable, it wouldnt matter whether a God exists or not.

So, it can actually be up to the atheist to argue the objectivity of morality. For example, as Sam Harris points out, the conditions of human existence require that certain behaviors be favored over others in order to achieve the greatest possible amount of prosperity for everyone. In a way, this does make morality objective, because there is a very narrow path to this prosperity, and acts like murder and rape would not be a natural part of it. If the theist argues that the prosperity of human life is not necessarily important, then they are again contradicting themselves as well as obscuring the definition of morality. If Morality is not defined as being for the benefit of mankind, then what is your definition of it?

On top of that, the atheist can argue that human life is intrinsically valuable for the very simple reason that human life is itself the source of value.

In any case, the theist forfeits his claim to the moral high ground in saying that ONLY a God can define morality. If God is the only reason that murder is wrong, then what would be 'wrong' with a God who permitted, or even encouraged murder? Theists always use words like murder and rape when they make these arguments, but they never ask themselves why those words, in and of themselves matter so much to them in the first place. It's because they evaluate those words by what they entail, not by what God permits or does not.

 

[BlackLight]

3. Objective Moral Values

It occurs to me that, in arguing for the existence of objective moral values, the apologist must actually argue against them. You see, the theist's main point is always that the existence of moral values is contingent upon the existence of God. This is not the same thing as saying moral values are objective, because if they were truly objective they wouldnt depend on God to exist. You can catch them making the same error in saying that human life has intrinsic value IF God exists. This makes no sense, because if human life is intrinsically valuable, it wouldnt matter whether a God exists or not.

True, but this sort of error in circular thinking dominates in Christian apologetics. In the Cosmological Argument, they'll tell you that anything that began had a cause. But when you ask them what caused the Cause, they'll tell you nothing, because their Cause (God) exists outside of nature, and is not subject to the one immutable fact of reality that they laid down not 10 seconds before. When you bring up the infinite regress problem, they dismiss it, telling you that 'infinite' can't exist. But they're perfectly okay with their uncaused Cause being past-eternal.

So not only are they claiming to know the absolute rules of This Universe, and not only are they willing to assume an Extra-Verse existing outside of our own, and not only are they're claiming to know the absolute rules of this Extra-Verse, they're cherry-picking which rules of the Extra-Verse apply, and when.

It's hard to understate that level of pure hubris.

 

[nemesiss]

is it just me or is craig (so-called) 2 arguments
"1: if there is a god, then we have an objective morality and 2: if there is no god, then we haveno objective morality"
just and an the same?

i also find it funny that he claims that his so-called morals are from (a) god, that they are objective.
however, their god seems (and does) change morals on a mere whim, which sound to me that morals for their god are anything but objective.

 

[TheMaw]

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2. The Universe began to exist
3. Therefore the Universe had a cause

Taken as a whole, the argument is logically valid, in that it is proof of a possible concept. However it is clearly not logically sound, as the premises are not inherently true.

First, looking at the entire argument as a whole, the Kalam cosmological argument invokes a compositional fallacy. Causation is experienced ( a posteriori ) within the Universe (pace David Hume et al). Extrapolating this experience of causation to the whole of the universe (or beyond the universe) is clearly unjustified. Furthermore causation presupposes a spacetime context. If spacetime came into being via big bang, it is senseless to say that there was a cause for the basis of causation (spacetime).

The first premise, 'Whatever begins to exist has a cause', is false. Within quantum mechanics, effects are produced with no causes (quantum fluctuations, radioactive decay). Even if there were to be some unknown cause to these effects, they would still be indeterminate, probabilistic causes which is a far cry from the unique, linear beginning that God willed. The premise also fails to acknowledge other non-linear and/or non-unique physical causations.

The second premise, as stated earlier, invokes a equivocation/compositional fallacy, as 'begins to exist' within the first premise is based within the Universe. This is clearly not the same 'beginning' as denoted in premise 2. The premise itself is also not a scientific truth, as there are in fact scientific models which have the Universe infinite in age, yet are in line with current scientific data. Furthermore it ignores the Multiverse hypothesis, which has a substantial mathematical defense to it and can not simply be waved aside. There is not enough empirical evidence to make any assumption that the multiverse had to begin.

William Craig defends the premise that the Universe had a beginning using a priori reasoning, that an infinite past is impossible. He argues that if the past were infinite, we could never reach the present. This is false. The present can be reached given an infinite amount of time. Ignoring this would be equivocating 'infinite'. Craig has also mentioned Hilbert's Hotel as the seemingly impossibility of the infinite as well as stating how subtracting X from infinity leads to contradicitons. This however does not denote a contradiction as Craig asserts, but simply shows the counterintuitive nature of infinity. Also, considering Infinity is not a natural number but an unbound set, it is meaningless to attempt to subtract from or add to it (at least in the way Craig is arguing).

What the Kalam argument does is attempt to answer a question with a mystery (God) and therefore supplies no intellectually satisfying answer (especially given that 'God answers' beg metaphysical questions which are unanswerable). Finally, arguing that necessity cannot be placed on anything non-metaphysical (natural, explainable) and shifting necessity onto a metaphysical unknown can be seen as a double standard that satisfies faith and not reason.

TL;DR the kalam argument is stupid.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

So there are more basic failures to the fine-tuning argument -- among them, you have the fact that being fine-tuned for the sake of producing complex life would mean that the emergence of complex life throughout the universe should be a relatively easy thing. It would mean that finding intelligent life on other planets would something of a banality. The fact that there is intelligent life on one planet, that's it's rare, that there is yet to be another example of life of any scale found on other planets, and that the universe itself is pretty toxic to life throughout most of its volume implies that it's not fine-tuned for life, but just within the workable parameter range that allows for life.

I think Leonard Susskind actually put it rather nicely in that he showed that this universe, if anything, is fine-tuned to support the existence of black holes. In fact, it is nearly optimized to create the maximum possible number of black holes, and the possibility of life is merely a side-effect of those conditions.

Secondly, there's the problem that he is trying to make a probabilistic statement with a sample size of one (universe). There's nothing available to suggest that there are other forms that the universe could have taken. WLC's only rebuttal to this isn't a rebuttal at all... it's simply a rewording of the fine-tuning argument through analogy. The usual approach he takes is to say that we should imagine a blank piece of paper with just a few dots near the middle, and that represents how unlikely it is that our universe can exist... Again, without establishing the range in which those variables can even be, and completely disregarding the relationship between those constants.

He's actually quite wrong in his analogy, as it so happens, because what's important is not that force x is stronger or weaker, but how it relates to everything else. Meaning that rather than a few points, what you would actually have is a series of curves, and a "fuzzy" volume defined around those curves. But even if he wasn't it also disregards the dependent nature of some of these forces -- e.g. change the magnetic constant in relation to the electric constant, and you also have a different speed of light, and so on. Things like this may actually indicate that even in a multiverse, there may be a fairly limited range of possibilities for how much "tuning" is possible... and if this universe is the result of quantum field fluctuations, that would actually make sense. Without having any sort of established problem domain here, you can't actually say that it's unlikely let alone quantify that unlikeliness.

 

[RedYellow]

I wonder why its so amazing that God fine-tuned the earth to suit the needs that he supposedly built into life in the first place? in other words, sure it's amazing that we have oxygen to breath, but why did god make us need to breath oxygen?

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

I wonder why its so amazing that God fine-tuned the earth to suit the needs that he supposedly built into life in the first place? in other words, sure it's amazing that we have oxygen to breath, but why did god make us need to breath oxygen?

It was Satan, I tell you. He tried to make us a failure by having us needing to breathe. But God succeeded, what a glorious triumph

 

[Mr. Zeitgeist]

Everyone here must know, Craig is not a theologian. A Theologian would be James White who studies historical developments of beliefs, they are basically religious anthropologists. Craig is just a Christian fringe Apologist only ever respected in Christian fundamentalist circles and is recognized by no one credible other than the likes of J.P. Holding.

 

[RedYellow]

Everyone here must know, Craig is not a theologian. A Theologian would be James White who studies historical developments of beliefs, they are basically religious anthropologists. Craig is just a Christian fringe Apologist only ever respected in Christian fundamentalist circles and is recognized by no one credible other than the likes of J.P. Holding.

That, and he's basically just good enough with words that he can create the illusion of a sound argument to people who aren't so talented.

I think my ultimate counter-argument to Craig would be to point out that even if god created the physical universe, the universe by extension would still have as much of an explanation for it's existence as god does. And like us atheists, the theist is basically saying that at least the potential for the universe to exist is eternal, and probably even necessary.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I posted a thorough rebuttal to the Kalam Cosmological Argument here.

 

[sturmgewehr]

Who won the Debate with Hitchens, I haven't seen the debate yet but many people say Craig won the debate.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

Won the debate? I've heard that story, and it's been said here by some dude that "even atheists recognize this".

I watched the whole debate. It was torture, but I managed to get through it. Hitchens destroyed Craig's arguments, the only problem was that the audience didn't realize it, nor did Craig.

The debate was basically the following:

Craig: We haven't heard any arguments against the existence of God, whatsoever! This shows a great lack of foundation for atheism!

Hitchens: We don't need arguments against God's existence, since there's an overwhelming lack of evidence for his existence. Thus, a lack of evidence = lack of belief.

Craig: Erhm... We STILL have heard NO arguments against the existence of God! Mr. Hitchens has managed to ignore this claim of mine...

Audience Redneck: I laaeyk wut dis Craaeg dude is sayin'!

 

[Laurens]

Who won the Debate with Hitchens, I haven't seen the debate yet but many people say Craig won the debate.

The winner of a debate is completely subjective, at least in this context.

If you agree with Craig's position then he won. If you agree with Hitchens' then he won.

I don't think such debates can have winners, and they shouldn't be about that either.

That's one thing I can't stand about Craig's attitude about debates actually, he always constructs his arguments like its a competition to be the winner. He has no interest in debate, only in coming across like he won something...

That's basically all he's good at; pretending debates are competitions and acting like he wins them all the time.

 

[Inferno]

Who won the Debate with Hitchens, I haven't seen the debate yet but many people say Craig won the debate.

I watched a few minutes of the debate while writing my reply to TruthIsLife7, who asserted much the same thing. I couldn't get past minute 10 because of Craig repeating his same old points again. If Hitchens really had no proper reply to them, then Hitchens would lose all of my respect in one instance.