The William Lane Craig Debunking Thread

[CommonEnlightenment]

I think the old saying is, "Never argue with idiots, they will drag you down to their level (most likely manipulative) and beat you with experience."

I'm thinking with the advent of the internet that some people like to hide behind the veils of the internet. Some of these people could be what you would consider to be good 'friends' in real life and then follow and stalk individuals through these new mass media means. Very unfortunate consequence of the internet 'social network' era. Just remember folks, pretty much everything has positives and negatives when dealing with other 'individuals'. All of these gray areas that need potential solutions..... And too little time, meh, where is my coffee.

 

[Laurens]

 

[Laurens]

I was discussing the fine tuning argument the other day, and I've come to the conclusion that any talk of probability when it comes to the constants of the universe is utterly dishonest because we have no idea of the following variables:

1. Whether the constants could vary
2. If they can vary by how much
3. How many universes there are

etc.

Any attempt to come up with a probability for the fundamental constants being the way that they are without at least some of this information is entirely dishonest. It would be like claiming to know the odds that I will roll three 6's in a row with some dice, without any knowledge of how many sides the dice have, how many dice I am going to roll or how many times I'm going to roll them.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

You can't get away from the argument by explaining the existence of this universe by quantum soup or by string theory branes or anything like that, since if those things are not eternal (which Craig and others argue they cannot be because actual infinities cannot exist), we still need an explanation for their existence.

The nature of the quantum field is one which necessarily refutes his assertion that actual infinities cannot exist because it is merely a potentiality field. Since potentiality opens itself to probabilities of infinite support, you have an infinitesimal (though technically non-zero) potential for an actual infinity. Remember that nothing actually NEEDS to exist in any physical or material sense at all in order to create something because you can have both a universe and an anti-universe, leaving nothing creating what is technically nothing (it is only "something" within a localized perspective). Problem is that you can't really think of the quantum soup as a "thing," It's not. It's everything that could be.

In every argument I've found that argues that actual infinities cannot exist, the argument necessarily confuses "actual" with "physical." Sure, I don't think anybody is arguing that there can actually be an infinite number of apples in a garden... but at the same time, the capacity to produce an infinite number of apples does exist because it's a cyclical phenomenon that can repeat indefinitely provided conditions are supported -- and while this solar system will not live forever, that death is far enough away that we can move elsewhere by then... that process can repeat, and the fact is that previously dead solar systems can respark in the future as well, yielding a possibility for an outer cycle (and perhaps into other universes if the multiverse idea pans out).

In a slightly off-tangent point, in Craig's extrapolations from the KCA, he talks about how he derives the identity of his mystical creator, and one of the things he brings up is that being not within our space-time and physics absolutely must mean that the creator has to be a timeless, spaceless, uncaused, immaterial entity of nearly infinite power. In the second part of my argument against the KCA, I pointed out a way this extrapolation is not at all valid, because all of those aspects can be assigned to something which has NONE of those negative properties and yet, can present with the illusion of having ALL of them. In much the same way, the "infinite" quality of time, space, the universe, or whatever need only be an *apparent* infinity.

Fortunately, the objection about causality I presented, does not in any way depend on time coming into existence at the big bang moment. All it needs is that time came to exist at some point. Also, time doesn't necessarily exist, so it too is contingent. And since time then needs an explanation according to modal version, we run into the same trouble with causation we did in temporal argument.

When you say that "time doesn't necessarily exist", that can be taken another way, actually. There is quite a bit of work that suggests that time itself is merely illusory. Craig seems to prefer an absolute model of time, which we know to be false simply by special relativity alone, but he needs that absolute model of time so that he can say that the universe is finite, when its finite-ness or infinite-ness can only at best be defined as an experiential truth with our current knowledge. I'm actually a little more prone to lean in the direction of time as an effect rather than an intrinsic property of existence, but that's only because I can visualize how it wraps up a number of other things I do know in a nice neat little bow, which isn't much of a good reason in practice.

 

[Dean]

Ah, yes. I've been acquainted with Craig's literature, and his peculiar brand of convoluted theological argument(s) for a very long time, and am thinking about devoting some effort into de-constructing those arguments in the future. But sadly, as AndromedasWake told me: "He is made of lie." ... but for the time being, I would like to address two points.

Firstly is an argument I encountered, not from William Lane Craig himself, but from one of his fan-boys on the Interwebs. Of course, even Craig himself has said that he refuses to debate with Internet critics, e.g. essentially just declaring them to be inferior to him, and also insinuating that we Internet-based sceptics couldn't possibly have picked up on anything that he and his scholars have missed. And this might be a reasonable enough principle , if indeed, he actually stood by it , but that's not what he does, for some reason. He typically posts great lengthy rebuttals to Internet critics on his (*lol*) 'Reasonable Faith' website, especially YouTube critics such as Theoretical Bullshit.

But in any case, I found this argument from one of Craig's devoted followers, e.g. the 'We DO have evidence!' sector of theistic belief ... it's essentially just a bizarre and more convoluted account of the argument presented by theists,predominantly by Christians and Muslims,that God exists by necessity, because if he(/she/they/it ... ) didn't exist, then 'he'(?) wouldn't exist for you to not believe in him, i.e. it is necessary for a non-believer to non-/dis-believe in something,and that something is God(s), Therefore God must exist by default.

What people use this kind of argumentation completely miss is that it is the metaphysical concept of God that we disbelieve in, e.g. it would be naà¯veté to assume that atheists can see the Flying Spaghetti Monster, The Invisible Pink Unicorn, Apollo, etc, etc. right in front of their eyes, but simply reject their existence without even thinking about it. It's more the concept of God that we do not believe in, and I can see no logical reason why a scenario like: The concept of God exists in the minds of (some) humans, but God per se is nonexistent , couldn't be true.

The argument was formalized on YouTube, albeit I can't recall exactly from where .... and it goes like this:

• 1. Nonexistent things aren't constrained by classical logic
  2. God does not exist
  3. God is nonexistent, therefore God is not constrained by (classical) logic either
  4. God can thus exist and not exist in the same reality
  5. ... Therefore, God exists

Now, ignoring the fairly obvious problem in premises 3 & 4, and that the argument is illogical almost by definition, and cannot thus be used to appropriate any beliefs in a theistic God or gods, plus the obvious breakage of the law of non-contradiction ( i.e. = ,¬(P ^ ,¬ P) in standard logics), there is another, more glaring problem with this. Namely; one could rephrase the argument itself to discount god-concepts, simply by the fact that God doesn't exist, and if so, is an idea, and can exist in one's mind without any correlates in external, physical reality.

And second, many of you may have heard of Hilbert's Paradox of the Grand Hotel. And if not, you're about to. Many of Craig's opponents are critical of the notion that actual infinites cannot exist, as he believes, or the sophisticated metaphysical / ontological arguments that he creates to assert that such a scenario is impossible. So that's why I thought I would present my own argument against it here, to see if there is significant objection(s) to it.

For me, it is essentially a misunderstanding of Calculus in mathematical logics, and a misinterpretation of what is meant by 'infinity'.

The paradox can be stated like this:
An infinite and linear sequence of causes. Imagine Hilbert's Hotel with its infinitely many guests in the rooms 1"¦ad infinitum. Now imagine that every morning the guest in room 1 is woken up by the guest in room 2, and the guest in room 2 is woken up by the guest in room 3, and the guest in room 3 is woken up by the guest in room 4, "¦ad infinitum.

Many atheists do not seem convinced of W. L. Craig's arguments that such a scenario is impossible, and I don't necessarily agree with the way that he phrases it. So for that reason, I would like to present my own counter-argument to the alleged 'paradox', and see if there are any good rebuttals.

To me it's just mathematical construction, and not actually possible, physically OR metaphysically, because:

• 1. The universe is physically finite in space. If not in actuality, then for all intentions and purposes, e.g. the speed of light, and thus rate of transmission of physical information,is finite in speed.
• 2. --Hilbert's Hotel Rooms must necessarily have a minimum size; with which to contain at least one particle of matter (e.g. a quark or something), and the smallest diameter conceivable is Planck's Length, a.k.a. 1.616199(97)×10[sup]-35[/sup] metres.

Thus, the only logical conclusion I can draw from this is that the Hilbert's Hotel scenario is not even theoretically possible, because it would require infinite length.
Another impossibility: If the hotel is full, no more guests could possibly be added. The shifting of guests from one room to the next, just to free one room, would require an infinite amount of time, which is equally as impossible. And thus far since thinking of this, I haven't really seen any credible suggestion that any infinite linear sequence is possible, physically or otherwise. Any thoughts?

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

I find the usage of pure mathematical arguments to describe something about reality to be a complete non-sequitur, because mathematics is not physical reality. You need linking elements that establishes a parallel between the mathematical models and the phenomena observed in physical reality. Only after you have established that 'the phenomena you are looking for' has a behavior that 'resembles very closely with the mathematical constructs you are trying to use', that you can then try to predict certain unknown behavior by working out the consequences of those mathematical models (and you must keep in mind that those parallels maybe wrong to begin with and you just don't know it yet).
So I would appreciate that people would simply stop using those kinds arguments and see it for the logical fallacy that it is.

Now having said that, is there or isn't there phenomena in physical reality that resembles certain properties and relations that infinite has?
I personally don't know of any in particular but it doesn't mean that it can not exist.
There is a particular misconception that is important to clear here, infinity is not a number, it shares some properties with numbers and you can do certain things to it the same way you can do it to numbers, but that doesn't change the fact that it is not a number so stop treating it like a number. Infinite is a logical construct to describe the majorant of all real numbers, which is a problem in itself because the set of real numbers is unbounded and therefore there can not be such number. However that does not change the fact that we mean is 'something as big as we want', it is particularly useful to describe for instance 'tendencies as we use larger and larger numbers' or even to convey the idea of "unlimitedness". Now can we establish a parallel between something in physical reality and this properties of infinite?
Well maybe we can, take for instance space itself. The space in the universe is expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light, now assuming that is a self sustainable process (and there is no reason to suggest that it isn't) we can think of sending a craft traveling near the speed of light trying to cover the entire extent of the universe. Now what would be the total distance the craft will travel? Well no matter what number you can come up with the craft will eventually travel more than that, so the answer would have to be a majorant of any number and thus the answer is "infinite", the distance traveled is unlimited.
It doesn't matter that the aircraft will never get there or that there isn't any point in time at which an infinite amount of space would have been traveled, the same way it doesn't matter that you will never be able to count to infinite for the concept exist in mathematics. The point is never to be able to get to infinity, if you could it would have been a number (and it isn't).

Now you maybe able to poke some holes in my example in order to invalidate it (and that is not to tough to do) and physical infinities remain a fabled unicorn, but that is not here nor there, even if I don't know of any (and I find the concept abhorrent) I don't have a problem if actual physical infinities turns out to exist.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that actual physical infinities do exist. There is nothing you could say that could possibly establish the existence of a God in substitution of real physical evidence of God. Infinities and God have nothing to do with each other other than the fact that people decided to attribute the property of infinity to God. It is no more valid than to say that God was a Redhead and because Redhead's exist therefore God must exist. You haven't actually got an inch closer to proving God and you never will, because arguments alone is philosophy and not science, and it is impossible to establish anything in reality with philosophy alone.