Talk:William Lane Craig/Archive1

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William Lane Craig

I have heard some excellent lectures from Craig. Say what you like about his "worldview" (hate that word - damn you creationists!) he knows his stuff. Ace ^{of Spades} 00:16, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Caca

The tactics section lacks citations and therefore reads like contentless drivel. The 2 citations section repeats Thunderf00t's boasting on a subject that has nothing to do with the merit or lack thereof of the work of this extremely popular and well-regarded apologist. I would like to delete the 2 citations section and comment out the tactics section until someone bothers to substantiate those very serious claims. Discuss. 12:24, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy draft proposal on using videos as citations -[1]

W.L.C's tactics are obvious to anyone willing to critically analyze enough of his debates available on youtube. The example of the Bart Ehrman debate has been mentioned repeatedly to substantiate these claims.

The 2 citations section serves to demonstrate that while W.L.C may be publicly famous as a christian apologist, he is not as "extremely popular and well-regarded" among his academic peers as most people think. That is a perfectly valid assertion. Madscientistjaidev (talk) 17:48, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

He's respected enough to be cited plenty of times on bethinking.org, often under their "advanced" section. However, I should point out that considering some of the crap I've read on there, it only really underscores their appallingly low standard for what constitutes "advanced" theology. ^sshole 00:06, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that he is respected enough in public, and is a staple of online christian forums like bethinking.org. I simply argue that his standing among his academic peers is more relevant while judging the quality of his work. The 2 citations section shows that he is not as popular among educators and academics as his public reputation might indicate. Madscientistjaidev (talk)

ADK, all that says to me is that you're inclined to be harshly critical of this guy as an apologist and theologian, which is fine. However, he's a big deal and very widely read across the spectrum of approaches to xtian apologetics, from atheists interested in counter-apologetics to fundies picking and choosing whatever suits them, as they're wont to do. Does anyone think this article is very good? And why is there a medal on it again? I understand that the standard approach from a few here is to fight whatever they feel goes against their "right" to template whatever they feel like and then shift the burden to those opposing it. I also sincerely doubt any of them considered whether we want to put a shitty article like this forward as part of our public face. Fucking proceduralists and their templates. Some of these medals are embarrassing. 19:01, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

The assumption that it's possible to compare contributions to very different fields by comparing the average number of citations, is silly; h-index is even sillier, and by the way, it is impossible to infer the average number of citations from the h-index.89.249.165.5 (talk) 19:18, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Some troll came along and edited this article in a way that I think was partly very helpful.

Thunderf00t's "two citations" argument looks pretty stupid and petty to me. Articles with the highest h-index tend to be in fields that rely on heavy use of citations: the sciences. The London School of Economics recommends HPoP be used to query social science and humanities impact. I imagine it returns substantially different and more reliable results for humanities publications or they wouldn't recommend it.

I'm admittedly not adept at doing h-index queries. Nonetheless, here's a sampling of what I found for a few of my professors and people around my community. I hope I got it more or less correct. Depending on the query, William Lane Craig gets 15-24. That's not what Mason reports, but I'm sure he's better at this than I am. However, if his h-index is 18, as he claims, that's not all that remarkable one way or the other. PhD students can have a higher h-index than Thunderf00t appears to falsely claim Craig gets. Renowned Shakespeare scholar David Bevington gets a 24. Former head of the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, Ted Cohen, gets 12. William Wimsatt, another philosophy professor at U of C, now emeritus: 25. Frank Easterbrook, U of C professor and 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge: 56. Antonin Scalia: 22. Howard Nusbaum, professor of neuroscience at U of C: 34. Like I said, I'm not sure I'm necessarily Doing it Right, but these results don't, at least to me, recommend Thunderf00t's analysis, particularly since I think he's an erratic scumbag and even some of his good Why People Laugh at Creationist videos occasionally get theological arguments and creationist positions wrong. Maybe someone else cares to defend it.

I'm removing this section in a few days unless there's consensus to keep it.

Articles about prominent apologists and creationists need to be particularly well cited and politic or RW looks like a bigger joke than it is in places. At least this one doesn't call him an asshat or bullshit artist or whatever it was. FFS it previously called him names in the section claiming he lards his debates with ad hominem attacks. "Muy snarky." 18:53, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to know what would be an expected and typical level of citations in his field before you remove it, and how he compares in measures used in said field - David Gerard (talk) 21:03, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Ask Thunderf00t. He's the one claiming to know all about what h-index a theologian should have on a scale used primarily by scientists. I'm not aware of a single academic in the humanities talking about an h-index or even comparing her volume of papers against another's. But again, Thunderf00t's the pro. Anyhow, it's beyond dispute that Craig is a renowned apologist and theologian and widely read author. He's huge compared to a science grad student who makes YouTube videos under a fake name. What else matters? 02:14, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Sources

I added sources to several previously unsourced quotes and took {{Sources needed}} out. If there is yet more unsourced material please put the template back. Proxima Centauri (talk) 09:15, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, RW is supposed to be original research, right? Whats with the sudden obsession with sources? Madscientistjaidev (talk) 17:46, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Erm... the same reason that a published paper of "original research" will have about 30 footnotes and references? ^moral 18:32, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

The article says that Craig said the following:

"The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost is the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit."

Can someone give a source for this saying of Craig?

Got it. Ty^JFBAA 00:40, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Yep, it's what he says in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-fDyPU3wlQ

ScepticWombat (talk) 12:09, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Canaanite free will

"If every single Canaanite adult was bad people born into the Canaanite community could not exercise free will and choose to be good." I'm not sure why this was taken out, it looks logical to me and it's relevant to Craig's beliefs. Proxima Centauri (talk) 19:30, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It isn't even english.^{— Unsigned, by: WaitingforGodot / talk / contribs}

Reason One: The sentence looks like a four-year-old wrote it. And that's after you "improved" it. Reason 2: Your logic is all messed up. How does it follow that people are predetermined to be "bad."? Is that what Craig says? Why couldn't a Canaanite choose to be good just because all of his neighbours hadn't? Theory of Practice "Now we stand outcast and starving 'mid the wonders we have made." 19:37, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Two Citations Craig

Actually, i understood the video differently, Thunderf00t is saying that 2-Cite Craig uses only two citations of only two people to prove his point. Instead of giving actual facts. ^{— Unsigned, by: 112.208.113.140 / talk / contribs} 03:24, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Delete the whole section. Aceⁱ⁹ 03:43, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I deleted this section and it should have really been titled "Shit thunderf00t sez". Aceⁱ⁹ 03:44, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I support the deletion as it stood, but is the criticism valid? Perhaps the point could be made without referring to Thunderfoot's "Nya nya nya I'm a genius" histrionics. --Damo^Hi 03:59, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

"On Morality", denying the antecedent

In the section "On Morality" it is claimed that the syllogism "~P -> ~Q; Q; ∴P" is an instance of the formal logical fallacy "denying the antecedent" and invalid. This form is *not* an instance of the fallacy, and is a valid inference more closely related to modus tollens.

I've deleted the offending text, sorry if that goes against policy here. ^{— Unsigned, by: 175.137.215.97 / talk / contribs}

1) Please sign your posts using four tildes.

2) You're absolutely right that the argument form described in the text is modus tollens, not denying the antecedent. For Spud, who reverted your edit: denying the antecedent looks like this: "If P then Q, ~P, therefore ~Q."TallMan (talk) 12:00, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It's a modus ponens. Premise 1 is easier to see by contraposition: If objective morals exist, god exists. 21:44, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

The text that concerns me currently reads:

"This is a common argument among Christian apologists. However, this argument contains the formal logical fallacy of denying the antecedent, characterized by the form:

1. If P then Q.
2. Not Q
3. Therefore, Not P

This argument is not logically valid."

This pattern is (quite literally) a textbook modus tollens. It is not denying the antecedent. If the schematic rendering in the article is correct, then Craig's argument commits no formal fallacy - whether you choose to treat it as modus tollens or contraposition + modus ponens is completely inconsequential. That is, you could prove the validity of Craig's argument either way, and both proofs would be correct (the modus tollens proof, if you were a stickler, would probably require an explicit double negation step). It may be that Craig's argument is not properly represented here, and he really is committing a formal fallacy - in which case the presentation of Craig's argument needs to change. But if it's being summarized adequately than there's no formal fallacy. TallMan (talk) 04:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that's his argument since he's not an idiot. It's logically consistent and tugs at the heart strings. The article isn't very good. You don't need permission to fix things that are obviously wrong and, after seeing his discussion, people aren't going to be reverting you when you remove that section. The article is still filled with petty nonsense. Go to town. 04:51, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

A suggestion here. A lot of the longer proofs in this article probably belong under articles for their specific arguments, and we should just link to articles for the arguments and give brief summaries here. Unless some of his arguments so greatly differ from the standard forms of the arguments, I don't see a reason to have such large sections of the WLC page devoted to counter-apologetics. --ShadowofLords (talk) 13:14, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the comments and Tallman. We have a nascent counter-apologetics category, but I disagree with removing fuller descriptions of his arguments. I don't accept, like others might, that massively wikilinking material is an effective way to keep a reader engaged an on a single page. Maybe I'm wrong about SEO and my own preference for user experience. I frankly think wikis are terrible at addressing users' core needs. People aren't coming to a William Lane Craig article to learn that he went to Wheaton College and has a PhD in theology. Seems to me that we can offer something different than WP. Just my thoughts. I've got no pride of ownership - I just think it ought to be a priority to have extremely good articles on prominent apologists since we're coming up relatively high on Google and I'd like to see us getting cited more frequently. 15:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Problem with the "circular reasoning" counter-argument to the KCA

Sure, the premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" is the same as saying "Everything, except God, has a cause", if you define God as the only possible uncaused cause. So the argument becomes:

• P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
• P2. The only thing that did not begin to exist is God. [NOTE: THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT GOD EXISTS]
• P3. An infinite regress of causation is impossible.
• C1. There must be an uncased cause that did not begin to exist (from P3).
• C2. God exists (from P2 and C1).

The article, as is, claims that this is circular reasoning. I do not think it is, because none of the premises require the conclusions to be proven. One could conceivably prove the premises without this argument: an argument is circular if you can only prove its premises using the conclusions of the argument itself. P2 could be proven without using C1 or C2. So I think this objection is invalid, because the conclusion is not inside the premises. Nowhere does it state that God exist, only that, if there is an uncaused cause, it must be God. And that is where the real problem lies - P2 has not been proven (neither have P1 or P3, but P2 is the fishy one). What do you guys think? P.S. I am an atheist - I am not trying to bullshit you guys. Epistemos (talk) 22:51, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The way you have it written is still begging the question. P2, essentially "God has the property X" (in this case, "did not begin to exist"), presumes that God exists and has that property. Now, if you had written it as "If god exists, he is the only thing that did not begin to exist", then you wouldn't have begged the question (though the argument could and would still fail for other reasons). Your note is just incorrect. But this isn't what the argument says. The argument presumes there is one thing that did not begin to exist and presumes that that one thing is god. So, it's still begging the question. Shadow of Lords ^talk 19:29, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

You make the mistake of assuming that saying "X did not being to exist" means "X exists" (that is, that P2 includes C2). How can that be? What P2 says is that, IF a First Cause exists, it must be God (i.e. he could not exist and P2 would still be true). It does not say that it exists (C2). It is only through the combination of P2 and C1 that we managed to arrive at C2. The conclusions are NOT in the premises, thus it is not circular. The problem is that the premises have not been proven, that's all. The argument I wrote up there is valid, but probably not sound, because P2 seems bogus and P3 is audacious. Epistemos (talk) 03:14, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

The conclusion is still in the premise, it's just hidden. I'll repeat it again: "God did not begin to exist" does still imply god exists, just as "god is not angry" presumes that god exists within the framework. It's just hidden in begging the question. I think it'll be made more clear with an example: "The table is not red." This statement presumes the existence of a table. So, not only is the statement not necessarily supported (as you would argue), but it also presumes the existence of a table (as I am arguing). Now, if it were formulated as "If the table exists, it is not red" then we have avoided begging the question (though it still is not necessarily evident that the table is red if it exists). A circular argument can still be valid (but unsound). "The table is red. Red things exist. The table exists." A valid argument, but the first premise still begs the question. Shadow of Lords ^talk 22:28, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, I guess you are correct. What you is say is similar do Russell's and Kant's objections to the ontological argument: saying "God is existing" is a statement that already assumes God to be existing, because things that do not exist cannot have any properties. So, in the way that the KCA is formulated, I guess it really is circular. Craig should formulate it was "The only possible First Cause is a personal deity" and then prove that there must be a First Cause. :P - Thanks for the debate, Shadow! Epistemos (talk) 03:10, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is not valid.

I have just seen an amazing refutation of the KCA right here. The KCA is:

• P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence.
• P2. The universe began to exist.
• C1. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.

The problem is: those two bolded sections do not mean the same thing. The universe began to exist in the sense that is has not existed for an infinite amount of time, but not in the sense that there was a time where it did not exist (because time is part of the universe). So when we say that a galaxy began existing, we mean something different than when we say that the universe began existing. Let's differentiate those two concepts of "beginning to exist":

• X = "a thing that began existing a finite time ago, after a point in time where it did not exist" (e.g. a star, virtual particles, you)
• Y = "a thing that has existed for a finite amount of time, but which exists at every point in time"

You can define X and Y as "things that began to exist", but they do not mean the same thing. So the argument becomes:

• P1. Everything that is X has a cause for its existence.
• P2. The universe is Y.
• C1. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.

Which is, clearly, not a valid argument. Epistemos (talk) 15:47, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

I think this argument runs a bit too close to straw manning when you have to reformulate it like that. "You see, if we just change premise A to some other similar premise and change premise B to some other similar premise, the argument doesn't work anymore!" Rather than reformulating the argument, it's better to just point out that there is a categorical difference between the beginning of the universe and the beginning of things inside the universe, which is clear because it is ridiculous to talk about a time before time really existed. If somebody rejects that argument, you can even ask if there was a time before whatever god they believe in existed, or if such a concept is just nonsense in their mind. In the same way, talking about "before the universe" may be nonsense. Shadow of Lords ^talk 22:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Drawing an important distinction between the meaning of "beginning to exist" in P1 and P2 is exactly what I did. To make it clearer, I wrote the argument down with the differences in meaning pointed out. If it draws close to being a straw-man, too bad, because IMO it is perfectly valid. Don't you think? Epistemos (talk) 01:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you did draw the distinction, and that's fine. I think the problem, however, is when you, taking your more distinct (and I believe better) definitions of "began to exist", post the same argument with your new definitions in place. That's where you enter the realm of straw manning. The issue here isn't the argument, it's the presentation of it.

Clarifying the two definitions by pointing out that he equivocated two meanings of "began to exist" where it is not the same thing? Perfectly fine and valid. Presenting this argument by repeating his argument but replacing the terms/phrases "A" and "A" with "B" and "C"? You've taken a valid (but completely unsound) argument and reformed it into an invalid (still unsound) argument. It's not the argument itself I have a problem with, it's more of a style critique. It leaves you open to "Well that's not my argument you disproved, it's your version of my argument!" Shadow of Lords ^talk 01:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Intuition is not a good source of knowledge

Dr. Craig constantly appeals to intuition to prove the premises of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. He also appeals to our common experiences when stating that everything that comes into being has a cause - however, the beginning of EVERYTHING THERE IS, including time itself, is a much more... delicate thing than a Star coming into being. It's like arguing that, from common experience, we know that "objects that are pushed go faster", and that "a can of Spam is an object", therefore a can of Spam going at the speed of light, when pushed, will go faster than the speed of light (this line of argumentation was developed by thunderf00t on his 37th edition of "Why do people laugh at creationists?"). The universe is MUCH more counter-intuitive than we can even imagine (quantum mechanics and general relativity proves that), so can we use intuition to find out why something exists rather than nothing? Something coming into being ex nihilo, without there being any time before its creation, is a VERY different case than a star coming into being. You can't use intuition philosophy to answer such a huge question. As philosopher Daniel Dennett once said (roughly): no matter the answer [to why and how something exists], it's going to be counter-intuitive, and it's going to blow our minds. Epistemos (talk) 20:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

On the Moral Argument being Circular

The main page says: "And finally, the moral argument, another favorite of Craig. Craig says if God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Craig argues that objective moral values do exist. Basically that our personal experiences of morality makes it true, which is another argument for God. Craig says (in his own words) [...] This makes it seem that all of Craig's arguments for God are tied to personal experience that are dependent on the existence of God, which he uses to support the moral argument to prove the existence of God. Again, circular."

How is this circular? The argument, as he formulates it, is as follows:

1) If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3) Therefore, God exists.

An argument's only circular if the only reason to accept one of the premises, is that you already believe the conclusion.

But that's not what Craig is doing. He's basing premise 2 off of our 'moral experience', as he calls it--not God's existence. And God's existence isn't entailed by premise 2, in and of itself, so it's not a hidden assumption of premise 2 either. God's existence only is entailed if we accept both premise 1 and 2--which is just to say the argument is valid.

Atheists can, and have, accepted premise 2 without accepting that God exists.

The argument, appealing to moral experience, is not circular. ^{— Unsigned, by: Venryx / talk / contribs}

The problem is not that the formulation of the argument itself is circular, it's that his evidence for premise two is circular (or non-existent). If he knows that moral values exist because god has revealed to him that moral values exist, and that's why god exists... it's circular!

Don't forget to sign your posts with "~~~~" at the end (no quotes needed) so we can see who posted! Shadow of Lords ^talk 19:00, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

RE: Gish Gallop

Craig doesn't use that as a serious attempt to stop people objecting to his arguments. See this debate, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTHLecSXaHU, where he only presents two arguments. This was an important debate (Austin Dacy is part of Craig's field of study, and so was capable of rebutting his arguments better than other people Craig debates. I think we should get rid of the gish gallop part in the debating tactics section.--92.236.209.177 (talk) 14:31, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm split on removing it. Unlike Gish, Craig doesn't spend his opening time just giving twenty weak critiques of his opponent's position at the start of every debate, which is nice enough of him. However, he does seem to start almost every debate with the same six or so "proofs", which take quite a long time to address. Shadow of Lords ^talk 16:53, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

This web site is so darn bias towards atheism, I wonder if atheists will accept "any" level of evidence to change their mind. Probably not. After all, they are naturalistic, believing "Nothing can be known apart from science" - which is funny, because that is self refuting. That statement in and of itself, cannot be proven using science ;) haha! 129.180.139.17 (talk) 01:06, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

As with Craig's other tricks, he is basically doing the same as the less impressively sounding apologists, but wrapped in more fancy-sounding rhetoric. Unlike the late Gish's transparent hail of questions and BS, Craig instead present 5 very different arguments for God's existence, which contain numerous other (sub)claims and then Craig, like Gish, demands that opponents disentangle and dismantle every bit, or the opponent will have conceded the argument. (Note that Craig's resurrection debates are different and he tends to do far worse in those exactly because he can't use the Gish-gallop as effectively).

This is the common core to Gish and Craig: Launch a massive series of topics and claim victory if your opponent doesn't address and refute every one. Quite apart from the absurdity of this logic (essentially "I win by default"), even attempting to refute Craig's argument is complicated by Craig's constant straw manning and sophistry in, for instance, using blatantly misleading terms such as calling the empty tomb of Jesus a "fact", or inventing the meaningless term "independently attested" when discussing gospel authorship. The latter term sounds deceptively like "independent sources" but is simply a red herring to distract attention away from that core historical concept. In Craig's lingo "independently attested" just means something like "written by different people" which is at best tangential and at worst irrelevant to the question of the historical reliability of the gospels as the central point is whether the later gospels simply copied the earlier ones (SPOILER: They did to a large extent) which would reduce the number of relevant sources to those earlier, independent gospels which then becomes the only ones really necessary to scrutiny for their accuracy and origin. Roughly put, the only undisputed independent gospel is Mark and possibly the "Q gospel" (if it actually existed), whereas Matthew and Luke both rely on Mark, and John is simply too late and incompatible with the rest to be of much use, even if we suppose that its differences stem from ignorance/independence of the synoptic gospels and not a deliberate attempt to rewrite history. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:05, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Did you mean John rather than Peter? Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 17:50, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Doh! Yes, of course I did [facepalm over my blindness]. I've just realised that I made the same mistake in Q gospel for f***'s sake, so thanks for catching this one! ScepticWombat (talk) 18:46, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

"...Law's objection relies on a presumption that Christians conclude God's perfect goodness from evidence in the world when Law's argument...

...only relies on the the theist accepting that God is good, not necessarily perfectly good, and that theists conclude God's goodness from facts about the world, not that they conclude his perfect goodness from those facts." I have no idea what this sentence is trying to do. Can somebody familiar with the controversey break that run-un sentence into component parts and write it more clearly? PowderSmokeAndLeather (talk) 15:52, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

"Unfliching towards reason" quote

This quote "The person who follows the pursuit of reason unflinchingly toward its end will be atheistic or, at best, agnostic" is out of context. Read the context here. He was saying the exact opposite.

"Before we can answer that question, we need to have some grasp of the challenge confronting us... Theology is not a source of genuine knowledge and therefore is not... a science. Reason and religion are at odds with each other... The person who follows the pursuit of reason unflinchingly toward its end will be atheistic or, at best, agnostic."

Based upon the quotation, you could even say that he said "Reason and religion are at odds with each other". So that's interesting, given his web site is called "Reasonable Faith". Clearly, he was painting an antithetical picture (if that word isn't too difficult for atheists to understand :P haha). 129.180.139.17 (talk) 01:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not clear that context changes the meaning at all - David Gerard (talk) 08:51, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

First, sorry for the long post :-)

Secondly,I completely agree with David Gerard that the context doesn't change the meaning at all. Indeed, Craig later in the piece (again) comes perilously close to admitting that it's only possible to instil his kind of literalist fundamentalist Christianity in people who are already steeped in a Christian social and intellectual setting, and that this is due to accidents of birth and culture:

" A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the Gospel which a person who is secularized will not. For the secular person you may as well tell him to believe in fairies or leprechauns as in Jesus Christ! Or, to give a more realistic illustration, it is like a devotee of the Hare Krishna movement approaching you on the street and inviting you to believe in Krishna. Such an invitation strikes us as bizarre, freakish, even amusing. But to a person on the streets of Bombay, such an invitation would, I assume, appear quite reasonable and cause for reflection. I fear that evangelicals appear almost as weird to persons on the streets of Bonn, Stockholm, or Paris as do the devotees of Krishna."

Here Craig pretty much admits outright that his religion is in essence no different from Krishna (or leprechauns...), and that only by indoctrinating people to think otherwise can his style of literalist fundamentalist evangelicalism maintain (or re-establish) its grip on the population.

Craig's attitude towards academia is also abundantly clear: If universities don't "stay on (his) message" and affirm Craig-style fundamentalism, then universities most be opposed (so much for free enquiry...):

"I mention academic life because the single most important institution shaping Western culture is the university. It is at the university that our future political leaders, our journalists, our lawyers, our teachers, our business executives, our artists, will be trained. It is at the university that they will formulate or, more likely, simply absorb the worldview that will shape their lives. And since these are the opinion-makers and leaders who shape our culture, the worldview that they imbibe at the university will be the one that shapes our culture. If we change the university, we change our culture through those who shape culture. If the Christian worldview can be restored to a place of prominence and respect at the university, it will have a leavening effect throughout society."

Craig prefers the conclusion that there must be something wrong with academia, not his fundamentalist faith, and that this means that:

"The root of the obstacle is to be found in the university, and it is there that it must be attacked."

Ironically, when Craig describes European evangelical scholars, he may have been describing himself:

"What evangelical scholars there are tend to be big fish in a very small pond. Their influence extends very little beyond the evangelical subculture. They teach for the most part at evangelical Bible schools and seminaries instead of the universities;"

(Craig has published with reputable academic printing houses, but that is the only bit of this description that doesn't fit himself)

What Craig describes as

"For example, over the last 40 years there has been an on-going revolution in the Anglo-American world in the field of philosophy. Since the late 1960's Christian philosophers have been coming out of the closet and defending the truth of the Christian world view with philosophically sophisticated arguments in the finest secular journals and societies. And the face of Anglo-American philosophy has been transformed as a result. Fifty years ago philosophers widely regarded talk about God as literally meaningless, as mere gibberish, but today no informed philosopher could take such a viewpoint. In fact, many of America's finest philosophers today are outspoken Christians."

is simply untrue. As Craig's own "career" well illustrates, this so-called "revolution" consists mainly of creating a parallel echo chamber of fundamentalist "universities" where he and his fundamentalist fellow believers can agree with and congratulate each other on their intellectual "merits" and give the public an impression that they're academics, rather than apologists. Contrary to Craig's claims (and he frequently repeats this in debates) mainstream philosophy at real universities has *not* seen a general shift towards theism, let alone a Craig-style literalist fundamentalist evangelicalism. Craig is a marginal figure in philosophy, and his only claim to fame is his travelling debate circus where he has essentially been repeating the same 5 "arguments" for his deity for the last 20-30 years - despite having each and every one of them refuted time after time. Craig has *never* incorporated such criticism, which indicates to me that he's either being deliberately disingenuous in continuing to peddle these arguments, or that he is simply incapable of accepting any criticism as valid. The main purpose of these debates seems to be to give Craig an opportunity to preach to the choir of already convinced believers, as well as giving the impression that his "philosophy" (read: apologetics) are at a par with serious scholarship, and to present himself as a "worldclass philosopher" who's the equal of academics who're employed at real universities and conduct actual research. ScepticWombat (talk) 13:28, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Unflinchingly Towards Reason pt.2

The quote on the front page is great, but it's not accurate. Here he is, explaining his position in a podcast. I don't think it gets any clearer than this.

[2]

Crash (talk) 02:24, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Can you summarise for those of us who don't want to listen to the podcast in it's entirety? Tielec01 (talk) 03:46, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

And please be specific about how this latest objection differs from the aspects already discusses (hence this move to a subsection). ScepticWombat (talk) 05:00, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

The author of the quote, William Lane Craig, explains his view in the podcast. He says it's taken out of context. The host of the podcast says numerous bloggers retracted their use of the quote (as of the podcast date anyway). William Lane Craig says the thesis of his article is the opposite of the quote. His view is also the opposite of the quote. Ie, he believes reason leads to theism, not atheism. The quote is meant to describe a (according to WLC) mistaken "post-enlightenment view" that WLC disagrees with, and wants to argue against.

Coming straight from the horse's mouth, I don't see why to keep this quote. Crash (talk) 00:58, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

This is just a naked assertion; what is this context? Simply appealing to Craig's authority as the original author is pretty weak, considering Craig's well-known penchant for bullshitting if not flat out lying, as already documented in the article.

Also, if the quote describes what Craig is arguing against it's still equally relevant, because it would be yet another debunking (by Craig himself) that he is actually espousing a "reasonable faith", and not exercising "faith-based reason" or even more precisely "faith-based rationalisation": If you need to appeal to such things as "the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart", then you're just making unfalsifiable assertions based on you own subjective emotions. This makes Craig's assertions of the correctness of his subjective feelings no different from oodles of other persons who assert that they feel that different or no gods speak to their hearts.

Btw, invoking the phrase "post-Enlightenment view" as a criticism sounds like classic Craigian BS: Just because something is "post-Enlightenment", doesn't make it any less worthy of consideration, e.g. quantum physics is very much "post-Enlightenment" (both temporally and in its emphasis on random events - "God doesn't play dice, etc.), but this is not a reason to reject it. Oh, and what Craig actually seems to be arguing for is not an "Enlightenment view", but rather a "pre-Enlightenment" one. Why? Because unlike the many famous deist Enlightenment thinkers, Craig uses fundamentalist Christianity as the basis for all his thinking and indeed seems to think that everyone else ought to too. ScepticWombat (talk) 04:47, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

This can no more be called an argument by assertion. We have clear evidence in the author's own words. He states what the quote means, says it is taken out of context, and says it doesn't represent his view, and this can be independently verified (see http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/transcript/s1-2 as well as http://www.reasonablefaith.org/god-is-not-dead-yet and http://www.reasonablefaith.org/advice-to-european-christian-apologists) to be, sadly, true.

Because the meaning is clear and verifiable, the quote is a misrepresentation. It falls below the standards of this wiki, and keeping it up misrepresents a person and misleads readers.

You're convinced there's something to this though. Given your "yet another debunking" argument, we can open another section of the article where you can make your case. This way, it can be clear we're not misrepresenting anyone.

Also, since you weren't clear- I didn't invoke "post-Enlightenment view" as a criticism. I was air-quoting Craig.

Do we have any other reasons for keeping the quote up there? Crash (talk) 23:18, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Yup, as I said it emphasises that Craig is not espousing "reasonable faith" and his objection is, essentially, that thinkers since the Enlightenment have not been as keen to use Goddidit as a valid explanation for anything. ScepticWombat (talk) 00:00, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

That can be emphasized (in context, later in the article) without openly misrepresenting his view. We hate it when we are quotemined. We should know how stupid this is. Crash (talk) 14:21, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

This is not quote mining - especially with the explanatory note. It highlights that Craig thinks it's wrong to rely on reason if it's not circumscribed by theological dogma (essentially, it's tantamount to presuppositional apologetics). But how about replacing it with the even more infamous quote where Craig dismisses evidence in favour of the "witness of the Holy Spirit"? That's probably more characteristic of Craig's world of ideas anyway. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:57, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, the current quote is great. Looks accurate to me. Crash (talk) 22:13, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

As to point 7 in the section on "Craig's debating tactics and criticism of opponents "

I think that point 7 misses the point. The problem isn't that Craig doesn't have to "simultaneously prove the existence of a god, and the assertion that the god is in fact the Abrahamic god", but that Craig uses his favourite tactic of equivocation. Because these debates are oral, the audience can't hear whether Craig is referring to "God" or "god"* , and Craig will even claim that his arguments form a cumulative case for "God", or to be completely clear, "Yahweh". Now it's quite obvious that Craig's arguments aren't cumulative at all. It's only by presupposing that the deity in all of his arguments, bar the one about Jesus' resurrection, is Yahweh, that this assertion becomes tenable. However, because Craig is always talking about "god/God" and not "Yahweh", it may sound to the audience as if he is indeed presenting a single cumulative case.

The one instant when Craig's argument is directly addressing Yahweh is in the resurrection of Jesus. However, here he ends up with at circular argument, because his objection when his opponents point out the implausibility of the resurrection is to say "Well, natural resurrection is of course implausible, but I claim that Jesus was raised supernaturally by Yahweh". So, the resurrection of Jesus proves the existence of Yahweh, and is plausible because Yahweh did it... Once this argument fails, the case for the cumulative link between all of the other arguments fail as well.

If Craig can't demonstrate the existence of Yahweh, there's no reason why we should just accept, even if we grant Craig his conclusions, that the deity or deities that gave us our morals are the same that "lit the fuse" for the Big Bang, or the one(s) who set the various constants Craig refers to in his argument from design, or even the "maximally great being" of the ontological argument. There's simply no reason why the deity or deities in these conclusions are necessarily all one and the same.

Another thing that the God/god equivocation does for Craig is that it provides flexibility. If challenged, he can always claim that he's not arguing for Yahweh but for some generic deity. If he isn't challenged, then Craig can give the audience the impression that when he said "god" he was actually referring to "Yahweh"

* (contrast this with how Robert M. Price in his podcast series, "The Human Bible", tends to be scrupulous about using "Yahweh")

ScepticWombat (talk) 11:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Subjectivism

Is it common practice to permit subjective language on a purported philosophical wiki? Why write subjectively what can be written objectively? Laziness? ^{— Unsigned, by: GallinBejal / talk / contribs}

God! are we a "purported philosophical wiki"? If so I'm gone! See here. Scream!! (talk) 13:26, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

(EC) Dunno, this isn't really a purported philosophical wiki. See RationalWiki and the links on your user talk page for guidance on our focus & style. Wẽãšẽĩõĩď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 13:29, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

"The New Theist: How William Lane Craig became Christian Philosophy's Boldest Apostle," Chronicle of Higher Education,

The author of the Craig hagiography in the Chronicle of Higher Ed., Nathan Schneider, shockingly unsurprisingly turns out to be a fellow, albeit Catholic, apologist who throws in an eclectic mix of leftist ideas:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-schneider/10-proofs-that-will-change-how-you-think-about-god_b_3392636.html.
• http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/damnation/no-revolution-without-religion/
• For some unknown reason, Schneider has a real hard on for Craig's brand of pseudo-philosophical apologetics: http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/witness/7-habits-of-a-highly-effective-philosopher/

One has to wonder whether Schneider realises who it is that he's promoting, or if he's just unaware that, in addition to his sleazy debating tactics, Craig also excuses biblical genocide, has defended Todd legitimate-rape Aikin and thinks that same-sex marriage is an attempt by promiscuous gays "to deconstruct marriage itself". ScepticWombat (talk) 10:34, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

What makes Wheaton College a "theologically-moderate evangelical-protestant" institution?

I removed the reference to Wheaton College being "theologically-moderate", because looking at its statement of faith it doesn't sound particularly moderate. It includes a pretty standard Evangelical creed on inerrancy:

"WE BELIEVE that God has revealed Himself and His truth in the created order, in the Scriptures, and supremely in Jesus Christ; and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writing, so that they are fully trustworthy and of supreme and final authority in all they say."

And it also suggests that staff has to adhere to this creed (which de facto limits academic freedom when it comes to critical analysis of the bible and other issues incompatible with the statement of faith) by declaring:

"The doctrinal statement of Wheaton College, reaffirmed annually by its Board of Trustees, faculty, and staff, provides a summary of biblical doctrine that is consonant with evangelical Christianity. The statement accordingly reaffirms salient features of the historic Christian creeds, thereby identifying the College not only with the Scriptures but also with the reformers and the evangelical movement of recent years. The statement also defines the biblical perspective which informs a Wheaton education. These doctrines of the church cast light on the study of nature and man, as well as on man's culture. "

Yes, it does contain some possible qualifiers compared with the openly wacky doctrinal statements of Craig's current employers (Biola and Houston Baptist), but at best, Wheaton is "moderate" within the extremist inerrantist literalism usually served up by Evangelicals. ScepticWombat (talk) 18:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Statements of Faith among evangelical institutions tend to be similar, but their interpretations are not. Wheaton is most certainly moderate in very important regards: it is a member of the American Science Affiliation , and therefor teaches the theory of evolution through the lens of theistic evolution. Its party line is also not to deny anthropogenic climate change, which I think is a continuing touchstone of more "conservative" fundamentalists who seem to exult in spurring on the end-times. What makes you think the Statement of Faith alone makes Wheaton "conservative"? Similar language is widely used, even among Catholic institutions (although their approach is substantially different but just as inconsistent throughout the history of the RCC). Inerrancy is always going to be the rule, regardless of the denomination — the only questions are the hermeneutics employed to reach it and the conclusions drawn. Even claiming that their god specially created Adam and Eve as human beings doesn't necessarily rule out theistic evolution among animals. Nutty Roux (talk) 19:30, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, I guess I'm just wary of cutting WLC much slack and I can see your argument pretty much follows the sort of "moderate compared to the really nutty Evangelicals"-line I noted at the end of my former post. If we go with that interpretation I think that a bit of snark might be appropriate for listing not being climate change denialists or YECs and adhering to theistic evolution as indications of being a "moderate" educational institution (it says a lot about what passes for "normalcy" among Evangelicals...) ScepticWombat (talk) 21:47, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Well. You may not personally accept these positions, but if you're going to characterize them as "moderate", "nutty", or whatever, it must be vis-à-vis evangelicals actual' positions, not your own beliefs about them. In my opinion, it's perfectly reasonable to call Wheaton "moderate" for its departure from familiar evangelical positions, although it dumbs things down because Wheaton is extremely "conservative" in other ways. I guess characterizing it depends on how far it does depart from key positions held by other "conservative" institutions. There's a lot more to suss out if you want to say anything more than that it's "moderate". 00:04, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I made a somewhat similar edit in this article when I added stuff which put Craig's "YECs are an embarrassment"-quote in context (by highlighting his support for ID and evolution denial). Could a similar "yes, but"-construction be used to put into perspective what exactly "theologically-moderate" means in an Evangelical Protestant context? I'm thinking of possibly ref'ing a couple of excerpts from Wheaton's statement of faith (with the actual excerpts being located in the footnotes) accompanied by a note to contrast with the excerpts from the statements of faith from Craig's current employers. ScepticWombat (talk) 04:25, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

It's easier to omit "moderate" and simply describe their position — after all, it's only relevant because they're a fundie college that's expressed positions consonant with Craig's. BTW, one of their theology or Hebrew professors commented that Conservapedia's "conservative bible project" was silly. See, Conservapedia:Letter_to_Douglas_Moo. Nutty Roux (talk) 19:53, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, probably that's because, while being fundamentalists to a greater or lesser degree, Evangelical theologians still don't approve of rank amateurs such as Assfly Andy Schlafly and his merry band of incompetents messing with scripture. Messing with scripture (in terms of providing ad hoc Rube Goldberg'ish scenarios or translations to make them fit what we now know of our world and history) should of course be the prerogative of suitably skilled theologians. Not to mention that Evangelical theologians have probably already deduced that Andy Schlafly and his demented posse's enterprise promises to be a rich source of embarrassment; it's kind of like how Ken Ham warns against Carl Baugh and Ron Wyatt. ScepticWombat (talk) 09:14, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Made Up Rules

Alongside the tactics and misrepresentations that WLC uses, he seems to have a special weapon at his disposal: the Made Up Rule. Here's a brief summary of this idea. Please comment on this and say whether you think it's interesting enough to add to the main article.

The clearest examples of the Made Up Rule, are that everything needs a cause, or that explanations that seem "ad hoc" are wrong.

Here's how it works: WLC makes up a rule. The rule often sounds plausible from the start and WLC has an ability to make it sound not only plausible, but almost certain. I would define the made up rule to be something that is not an interesting conclusion in itself, but leads, or appears to lead to WLC's conclusion AND it must be difficult or impossible to prove false BUT not actually proven by WLC nor definitely true.

WLC creates a chain of these made up rules around his main argument, often with peripheral ones that can be sacrificed. If questioned, he presses his opponent to prove that the MadeUpRule is false, which the opponent can't do because the MUR is often something that we don't know, and can't know if it is true. When the MUR is questioned more forcably, he claims that he doesn't need it to be certain, simply that it is more likely than its negation. He also has a defence for every MUR based on the vagueness of his thought and description of them. If questioned, he can normally claim that the opposition has mischaracterised or misunderstood the MUR. The main defence is that the opposition and audience are drawn to the conclusions of deductive reasoning that uses the MUR, and less likely to question or attack the MUR.

The reason that a series of MadeUpRules don't actually work in practice (unlike in a debate) is that we can easily construct arguments for almost anything if we're willing to make up plausible rules. For instance: In order to make something, you need to be in possession of its constituents. Heat is a description of a state. You cannot possess descriptions. Fire is constituted of wood and heat. Therefore you cannot make fire. That's a demonstration that actually, it is easy to make up rules that each sound plausible if not actually certain, and "prove" almost anything you want.

The list of MURs that I've seen in WLC's work are:

1) An infinite progression of time is actually infinite. And therefore impossible. And therefore the Universe must have had a beginning. Note that WLC's position cannot be disproved, which is what he forces his opponents to do. And the audience are ready to accept this because of the big bang. An opponent could say that perhaps there's an infinite series of universes that lead to this one, but WLC has defensive MURs to protect this. And the audience are not likely to all realise that we simply don't know whether this is a rule (or even whether it is meaningful to assert that this is a rule).

2) Everything that starts has a cause

3) Except god 3b) Rules can be broken by a class of object known as Transcendentals or something.

4) A mind can break the infinite causal regression

5) Tenseless time is a view that has inconsistencies, so time is tensed.

6) Scholars agree that there was an empty tomb. (In fact, of the scholars who think that we know whether there was an empty tomb or not, one poll found that most of that small narrow group said there was). This is more of a conclusion than a MUR, but it has a lot of the characteristics of a MUR --- the audience are likely to agree that there was an empty tomb, when actually we can't know.

7) If there's an alternate explanation for the bible that doesn't have positive evidence for it, then it is ad-hoc.

8) Ad-hoc explanations are wrong. (In my view, each one has a percent chance of being right, but there are very many ad-hoc explanations that are not refutable, and one of them is probably right).

9) There is an objective morality

10) A creator god gives meaning to things.

12) There is objective meaning.

13) If something appears to be written in the biography genre, then its authors can't have lied or been wrong. This is very similar to a MUR because it's implied by the way that WLC uses that fact and rarely gets tackled head on.

What do people think? Does the MUR theory for why WLC is so difficult to debate have merit, or is it basically just rephrasing "WLC makes things up", or other option (to avoid the false dichotomy)? It's obviously not his only trick (false dichotomies, being plain wrong, misquoting people, etc.), but it seems to crop up quite often. ^{— Unsigned, by: Ja123 / talk / contribs} 19:29, 1 August 2015‎

First, please sign your posts.

Secondly, what you call MURs are actually examples shifting the burden of proof with a side-order of argument by assertion and a dash of moving the goalposts thrown in for good measure. ScepticWombat (talk) 11:18, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Btw, on the empty tomb, Craig doesn't always cite Habermas as that's a more recent source and Craig originally cited German theologian Jacob Kremer's 1977 Die Osterevangelien: Geschichten um Geschichte. Ever since Habermas published his stuff, however, Craig has waffled back and forth between the two, such as when he was up against Richard Carrier who had prepared a thorough attack on Habermas' methodology and sampling, and Craig simply glided off by effectively saying "Well, that's fine, but I'm relying on Kremer" - a typical Craig trick of name-dropping without any context in the certain knowledge that his opponent can't check the source on-stage and the audience is highly unlikely to care about or be able to dig up an almost 40-year old theology book in German.

Bonus info: I think I actually may be able to get my greasy paws on a copy of Kremer (1977) (via a Catholic library), so if I have the time and can work up the motivation, I might actually check Craig's original/fall-back position (as I've spotted Craig shamelessly quote mining before). ScepticWombat (talk) 11:43, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Great. Yes, I did suspect that the MUR theory might be seen as just describing something that was already named something else differently. I wasn't aware of the Kremer / Habermas switch. What a sneaky guy! 86.135.31.113 (talk) 17:07, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Craig and Cosmological Time

Craig's wikipedia entry says that he believes that cosmic time is God's clock, which makes it possible to uniquely label every time as past, present or future. However, cosmic time is only rigorously defined for a homogenous universe ---[3] --- discusses it more.

I'm 80% sure that this concept is not unique if the universe is not homogenous. The universe isn't homogenous if you live on a planet or in a solar system, as I do, because it has local gravitational fields and things. The "Cosmic Time" is hard to pin down, then: a clock that had followed a path that took it to my house a billion years ago would have a different time to a clock that landed more recently. So surely it cannot be that this is God's time, since WLC's god presumably only sees one present at a time.

We should establish a body of papers that support this and raise it as an objection to WLC's ideas. ^{— Unsigned, by: Ja123 / talk / contribs} 10:53, 2 August 2015

Go for it. Craig's views on science are generally not very sound (nor are the conclusions he insists must be drawn from them). ScepticWombat (talk) 11:11, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

New and better format needed - especially for an article this long

I think this article has sprawled (look at the sheer length of it) and while it has plenty of good content, the organisation/presentation does leaves a lot to be desired. I can't be bothered (and doesn't have the time) right at this moment, but when I get around to it, I'll reorganise it into these main sections:

1. Lead (okay, not strictly speaking a section per se; anyway, perhaps a slightly adjusted version of the current one, but not by much).
2. Craig's background (pretty much the same as now, his degrees and employers and such like and why this adds a big question mark to Craig's "professional philosopher"-shtick).
3. What Craig is known for, introduction to his debates and pointing out that Craig is recycling the same scripts over and over (distinguishing between Craig's "Big Show", typically entitled something like Does God Exist?, with its 5 arguments for God's existence and his "Little Show" defending the historicity of Jesus' resurrection which is basically an expanded version of one of the 5 arguments).
4. Craig's 5 arguments from his "Big Show" as well as his claim about them being cumulative, where and how this all falls apart, and why Craig ultimately ends up with nothing more than his appeal to the Witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart. Craig's 5 arguments will be addressed in the order he himself presents them, i.e. the Kalam and its background, assumptions and problems first (also, that's his hobby horse and the one most readily associated with him), followed by the Teleological, Moral, and Resurrection (incl. the criticism of his expanded "Little Show"-version) arguments, and, finally, his appeal to the Immediate Experience of God (which even Craig himself admits isn't really an argument...). While requiring a major reorganisation, creating this new section mainly involves a cut & paste job of stuff already in the article.
5. Craig's debating tactics. Again, it's mainly stuff that's already there. This section explains the sleazy techniques Craig use to bolster his crappy arguments. However, I'm not sure that the new category of Made Up Rules (MUR) is very useful. The examples presented can all be tied to various fallacies already covered on RW, which I think is a more useful approach than making up a specific (ad hoc?) category tailored to Craig's crap. The examples themselves, though, are excellent illustrations of why Craig can't be trusted to present anything like a fair case and could easily be supplemented by direct quotes from his debating transcripts. This would also demonstrate why Craig's debates have more to do with "whatever it takes to win" pseudo-courtroom antics or high school debating society point scoring than with anything like an academic debate (once you stoop to quote mining, you've clearly left the realm of academia) and thus why all the triumphalist proclamations of how many debates Craig has "won" are essentially meaningless.
6. Craig & creationism (yes, it's a short section but it's important both in what it says about Craig and due to evolution denial being a good litmus test for someone claiming to be a serious and reasonable academic, rather than your run of the mill fundie apologist).
7. The Now, try an experiment-section (as this has to do with maintaining Craig's image as a super-duper academic).

I'm pretty sure that due to several rounds of rewrites, there are some repetitions already, but lost due to the length of the article. This format will hopefully weed those out as well as allowing those curious about Craig to easily follow his trail, a process made easier as Craig has pretty much been using the same script for his 5 arguments since the early 1990s, with the main modifications to be found in his name-dropping bits that Craig uses to forestall criticism or attempt to force his opponents into a particular kind of response. ScepticWombat (talk) 15:37, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I've completed the major restructuring and will give it a rest now, bar some tinkering with titles and the like. I'd really like some other editors to go over it, however. As I haven't cut that much out of the actual debate/arguments section and there might be surviving repetitions due to the copy/paste reformat of the old structure. ScepticWombat (talk) 11:40, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Upgrade to silver?

Is this article ready to go up from bronze to silver? If not what must be remedied? ScepticWombat (talk) 01:27, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm gonna help it out a bit first. It repeats itself in places, etc. But it's pretty close. The fact of the matter is, if we were to give this article the type of sweep we recently gave the Ken Hovind article, this thing could reach Gold within a week. That would be epic. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 11:31, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Though, to be fair, it's probably Silver already. Hell, I support Silver now. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 11:34, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

It's silver quality. Its major problem is, again, structure -- fully 75% of the (85,523 byte!) article is contained in 2 sections. Herr FüzzyCätPötätö (talk/stalk) 23:13, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, in terms of considering Gold, that is kinda ass. I'll see what can be done (knock on wood; ADHD). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 23:47, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

@Fuzzy: The reason I reorganised it this way is that Craig is basically known only for his debates and thus it made sense to me to have two large main sections dealing with, respectively, the contents of his 5 arguments and his debating techniques. Craig is touted as both a "professional philosopher" (read: sophisticated theologian) and a great debater so it's important to spend the majority of the article debunking his arguments and exposing his less than admirable debating tricks. It is exactly because of Craig's obfuscating rhetorical shell game that it is hard to do this in just a few paragraphs and I chose the current structure based on the fact that Craig himself always presents his 5 arguments in this order along with claims of them forming a cumulative case for god/God. I think the article is quite thorough in countering his various arguments in depth, compared to, for instance, Kent Hovind. However, this is also more necessary as WLC is far better than Hovind when it comes to dressing up his literalist fundamentalist apologetics in academic-sounding lingo and doesn't bumble so obviously as Hovind who has, after all, been called out by Ken Ham who includes him alongside such hopelessly bad apologists as Carl Baugh and Ron Wyatt as sources not to be used - and it's really bad when your apologetics are being slammed as sub par by the ICR gang... ScepticWombat (talk) 12:28, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Taking another look at it, the article could be changed by simply "moving up" the headlines of the subsections in each of the two main section one notch in the "title hierarchy", i.e. using level 2 titles (the 2 ='s) for them instead of level 3 (3 ='s). Alternatively, this change could be made for the 5 arguments section only.

I chose the current layout so that the hierarchy of title styles would make the interdependence of the subsections clear, but I can see that it might appear confusing when looking at the index. ScepticWombat (talk) 12:50, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

The reason I wasn't going for gold (yet) is that I had a hunch that this loooooong article contains repetitions, but considering that it's quite well referenced and I think the layout is okay (after all, I changed it myself; so, not the most objective spectator...) I thought that silver was at least feasible when compared with the discussions of the Hovind article. I'll admit to being rather "content blind" to the WLC article, given that I've been over it several times, so I'm hoping that others will be giving it a critical work over.

One section that might not be necessary is the final one ("Now, try an experiment") which I added in frustration over WP's rather sanguine article on WLC which has since seen some change (though it's still suffering from WP's blandness of NPOV and "rather a well-sourced error than an unsourced fact/no WP:OR" problem that tends to downplay criticism of charlatans like Craig who can maintain his academic veneer through the pseudo-academic echo chamber that is the US pseudo-educational fundie school sector). Still, that piece of my mind might be cut entirely and, for instance, be put onto a subpage on my userpage or be rendered into a short essay.

My point is that I'm simply too involved in the page's current content to be able to critically evaluate where it could and should be cut, not to mention that I currently am a bit pressed for time. ScepticWombat (talk) 12:17, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I'll help you take a look. (Again, knock on wood). But I did read through the article just the other day. We'll take our time with this, make sure it reaches Gold one day. Slow and steady wins the race. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 12:56, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Reverend. I'm not trying to rush matters, simply to ensure that this massively long page continues to receive attention and hopefully improve. ScepticWombat (talk) 13:27, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

New "silver/gold worthy" structure?

Above, Fuzzy suggested that the current structure was not up to spec, so here's a subsection for submitting ideas for reformatting the article. ScepticWombat (talk) 13:27, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Something I just have to mention

I'd like you all to consider this seriously for a minute. I've observed something with William Lane Craig, that might just be his invention of a, to my knowledge, unique debating strategy. Insanely, this is one of the lamest strategies... yet it worked so well on both me and my friend. I can tell you one thing - this behaviour must be deliberate on his part. So, what about this strategy, then? Well, it's a very passive sort of technique; almost coincidental. Almost. Whatever you do, don't expect any bells and whistles. The point is that WLC is fighting a quiet war of attrition via this strategy - and wars of attrition are fought over time (in this context, over the course of the debate).

When me and my friend first realised what WLC was in fact doing, we couldn't stop laughing. And once we started looking around, realising that he really does do this consistently, and worse, that it worked (on us, atleast), we strongly suspected we were on to something. Nothing major, but something that he actually does.

Back when I first saw it, I went "What the hell is he doing back there..? It's like he's doing his taxes or something!", and since then, me and my friend have started referring to that debate strategy as the "tax return" strategy. It's kind of a lame name, and it doesn't have to stick; it was just the likeness I happened to call out when I first realised what was going on.

So what is the core of the strategy, more specifically? Well, for one, it's a strategy directed against the audience, not against the person WLC is debating. Perhaps more novel, it is a strategy WLC enacts exclusively during the time when it's not his turn to speak.

And the effect of the strategy appears to be something between: "just" giving off a certain air of dominance to the crowd, and: what could literally be best likened to some kind of military jamming technique directed at your attention. For me and my friend (who both have ADHD, admittedly, it actually - annoyingly as hell - worked primarily like an "attention jammer" of sorts).

WLC's "tax return strategy" is perhaps most blatantly obvious in his debate with Richard Carrier, as evidenced here.

You will notice that in the clip, Dr. Craig (seated at a desk) is fully visible to the audience, as he is to the cameras as well. Dr. Craig has just finished speaking prior to this part (a long and dull speech no less). Dr. Craig, as always (see article) has a pre-prepared set of notes for his upcoming segment (meaning, he's not actually sitting there writing an essay to use in immediate rebuttal). And what's more, Dr. Craig doesn't seem to even bring all the notes he's clearly dicking around with up to the actual podium once it is time for him to speak again.

So we can rest assured that whatever he is doing, he's not actually paying too close attention to Dr. Carrier as an explanatory reason for the frantic paperwork theatre being performed by him. I'm not saying he's not listening closely to Carrier, I'm saying; that's not the reason for the filing session he's got going on back there at that exact time.

Now, skip ahead to about 31:10. Here, he really goes in for the proverbial jamming kill. I mean, look at him. The man is moving around papers, digging about, writing, flipping notes, reversing orders of papers, stacking, unstacking, leaning back and forth in his chair... All the while signaling how little he cares to what Dr. Carrier is talking about. The camera man even begins to dedicate his attention to Dr. Craig - who is doing jack shit back there - because of the lack of other sources of motion and action on the stage. See 31:28 for that precise part.

What the hell does WLC think he's doing back there? It's painfully obvious that he's just staging the shot of doing anything. Yet the thing is, he keeps this up, for tens of minutes! And me and my friend literally found that, once we'd noticed what he was doing back there - much like the camera man seems to do at about 31:28 - we just couldn't properly revert our focus back to Carrier.

Now, this debate marks an important meeting between atheism and apologism, but - from an audience member's perspective - it contains a lot of drudging detail (that is to say, good scholarship from Carrier). And just knowing that WLC is clearly fucking around back there, right behind Carrier's back (who has no idea why people are looking past him) just became too funny to ignore.

We literally found ourselves forgetting everything Carrier had just talked about. After skipping back the same five minutes several times over, we were forced to turn off the debate. And in all other instances, we easily sit through several hours of Hitchens without missing a beat. So it's not that we generally can't do long YouTube debates on this topic. It was something else; the damn tax returns.

This is a strategy from WLC; it has to be. I mean, the guy debates people all the time. His argument's don't change notably (see article). Surely he must be working on any way he can to get an advantage in a debate.

And with the tax return strategy, he firstly gets to project a cool aura of "not giving a fuck", apparently being so calm (and such a busy and important person!) as to sit there sending out christmas cards or whatever while in the midst of a debate! And secondly; even when it's not his turn to speak, he still manages to steal some of the attention of the crowd; often during his opponent's most technichal parts (in these hour-plus long debates). And it fucking works.

In all honestly, I found myself losing track of what Carrier was actually saying when WLC kept nailing those tax returns in the corner of the camera's eye (if not the centre). And I don't mean to tell you; Hey, open the clip for three secs and just focus fully on Carrier and be all "Wow Percy, this was so easy to ignore".

The key is subtlety. I mean, I could still hear Carrier perfectly well (of course); it's not that. It becomes more like those situations from school, where you did (try to) listen to the teacher, and when asked if you were listening you sort of remember some key words and go "Yeah!". But when the teacher ripostes with, "So could you tell me what I was just saying?" and suddenly you can't really combine the separate elements that were mentioned, and it all sorts of slips away in a short struggle... And they facepalm; "Next time pay attention!".

In my view, this strategy - if it's real, which I suspect - is a new one from the Creationist camp. The literal faking of doing your tax returns (with a completely uncessary gusto and power of motion belonging in some silent movie), stealing the audience's attention away from the most technichal parts of your opponent's speech. As we turned the debate off (having struggled to stick to Carrier's words), it felt like the most undeserved win from WLC, and it was, but the point is, WLC literally addled our brains bit by bit, to the point of causing us to tune out completely during Carrier's segments.

Now, I will have atleast one reservation, perhaps a major one under the circumstances. The attention-stealing effect I percieved from this "tax return" strategy could have been enhanced (perhaps quite a bit) by the fact that this particular debate just wasn't the most lively one I've ever seen; it's rather technical, and WLC takes his time bullshitting forever in it before Carrier even starts to work, and then from a very scholarly perspective. And me and my friend had sat there, being worn down for 30 minutes, when the tax return strategy just overtook us.

So maybe, you need to sit for half an hour, maybe even get a little bored, before you get vulnerable to this (alleged) tax return strategy. Who knows. But for what it's worth, the two premises are as follows.

1. There's no way WLC is doing this and that by accident, or really for any reason other than to distract from Carrier.
2. It literally psyched us out completely; thus, it worked. Not in a dramatic way, just... enough to cause us to zone out more and more during Carrier's parts. Which is devastating in a debate like this; losing the attention of the audience even for a second.

Thoughts on this? Naturally, I advise skepticism, Occham's (and Hanlon's) razor, and all the rest. Could be that Carrier's parts were boring, et cetera (it's up to the speaker to keep the attention and so on). But like, watch the clips. What the hell is WLC even doing back there? All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:40, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Wow, I must admit I've never thought of or noticed this as I have a very limited WLC threshold (I can only take so much smarminess...). I think there may be some psy ops aspect to Craig's doodling, but I'm not certain that it isn't a positive side effect (for Craig) that is secondary to what I think is the main focus: As you've pointed out Craig clearly scripts his responses in copious notes prior to the debates, so I think what he's doing is cross-checking these scripted answers and marking which ones he will use and making small adjustments to make them seem a little less tin eared.

Steven Law once hit the nail on the head by describing Craig's debates like this: "Debating Craig is a little like talking to someone who is trying to sell you double-glazing down the phone. Almost any comeback from you is already anticipated, with a scripted response, and a response to your likely response. So he sounds very, very confident and polished. Spend 20 mins on the phone with the double glazing guy, and you'll find his script allows no other ultimate response than the one he wants - "Why yes, I'd like to buy double glazing"." So I think that WLC is doing his telemarketing spiel here and selecting the particular responses he will use, incl. selections from his grab bag of quotes and namedropping.

I've seen some other examples where WLC is simply sitting there with his usual smarmy grin and condescending attitude (you know, the one that makes him think he can lecture Stephen fucking Hawking on cosmology(!)). While I'm not entirely sure of this, WLC seems to have even more notes in this debate than I've noticed elsewhere. If that's the case I'm suspecting that he felt it necessary to script his responses more extensively due to the specificity of the topic as WLC always looks less impressive when he's actually nailed down on specifics (e.g. the resurrection debates, such as the ones with Carrier and Ehrman), rather than being able to surreptitiously Gish gallop away with his "5 arguments" for God's/god's existence. Similarly, Craig looks far less impressive in less stylised debating formats, e.g. the conversational format of his debate with Shelly Kagan (probably why Craig didn't try to repeat that experience and demands rigorous formats). I've also noticed that his responses to more sophisticated questions (such as the one forming the background for this YT video at 0:58-2:39) in the Q&R sections following the formal debates also indicates how much of his reputation as a great debater is really based on being able to stick to a script.

Fundamentally (pun intended), however, I think you're right that WLC is working the crowd, not his opponent. This is similar to the core criticism of Craig, namely that he is simply adopting an academic pose because it makes his apologetics seem more effective. As the Robert M. Price quote in the article points out that is an incredible level of cynicism, but the fact that the actual academic merit of his arguments are secondary to his apologetics which again are simply another way of evangelising also explains why, despite Arif Ahmed's objection that debating from such a fideist standpoint makes the debate a waste of time in terms of gaining academic insights, Craig continues to work the debating circuit: It serves to provide him with PR and an air of academic respectability outside his fundie school echo chamber which allows him to continue his de facto evangelising to audiences which often include a significant number of like-minded believers, meaning that Craig is in effect preaching to the choir. His debates seem to serve no other purpose than giving the faithful (and especially his fellow fundamentalists) a feel-good notion that their religious ideas have some sort of academic cache. Note that in outright fundamentalist venues Craig's bullshit will notch up markedly, such as claiming that (his fundamentalist) Christianity has experienced a groundswell within academia (especially philosophy and physics - yeah right) over the last decades. Now this is patently false, but remember that Craig is mainly preaching to the fundamentalist subsection likely to either eschew academia entirely or to attend "religiously sound" (i.e. literalist) fundie schools such as Craig's employers (Biola and Houston Baptist) and thus they're unlikely to actually meander outside the group think.

Despite the tonnes of reasonable (yes, pun absolutely intended!) objections Craig has received since he first started riding his Kalam hobby horse in the late 1970s or when the blueprint of his "5 arguments" appeared in the early 1990s, Craig has changed very little in terms of the substance of the arguments, opting instead to simply expand his quotation grab bag with cherry picked and/or misrepresented lines from various actual academic authorities. Never forget Lawrence Krauss' caution (and devastating characterisation) of Craig's MO: "When you can’t check his facts or he doesn’t think you know them, he will lie." ScepticWombat (talk) 15:46, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for a great reply man! (Though, to be perfectly honest, your post could have used some spacing between the rows, heh). Regardless, well researched and interesting! The fact that you used the term "psy op" made me snort audibly; well done.

I find your explanations of the phenomenon I observed very likely. WLC was getting rekt on the fine print by Carrier, who went in to über-detail on Babylonian poetry and originator myths for the tale of Romulus and Remus (and so on). Maybe WLC's frantic paperwork was in fact him flipping through notes in order to consult a pre-made reply?

If so, I can tell you one thing - the note-flipping had little effect. As far as I saw in the video (which I admittedly didn't finish), he went straight to his own points when he got the mic back, instead of actually stopping in any significant sense to refute what Carrier had just said. They sort of talked past eachother, atleast for the portions I watched, to be honest (not Carrier's best debate, either).

Anyways, it was fun to just get this little observation off my chest. And "the tax strategy" has become sort of an inside joke to me and my friend at this point, heh. Because I think you will agree with me that this nearly amounts to horseplay from WLC's side, under the circumstances. Again; just almost.

Oh, from one thing to the next - while I don't trust Sam Harris to understand politics, social justice or war in the least, the man has a truly excellent grip on the purely philosophical aspects of theism in general. In this snippet from a debate between Harris and WLC, Harris completely bulldozes WLC with an eloquence I have to admit is rare outside of Christopher Hitchens. Worth a watch here; Harris refers to WLC's circular theism as "playing tennis without the net" (the context being, WLC's divine command theory as it relates to the problem of evil). All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 16:33, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Better with the spacing, now? Of course you were right about the formatting here it is more readable with extra spaces - I simply forgot the difference in final appearance.

Back to the subject matter. Your observations of the combination of WLC's frantic leafing through notes and still giving tangential answers makes sense to me; I'm suspecting that he wasn't sure which of his scripted responses were the least nonsensical. However, given that Craig essentially knows fuck all about Carrier's area of expertise (ancient mythology) and is only able to script so many responses in advanced based on secondary sources, I think he was really struggling here. I suspect it may have complicated things for Craig that Carrier's ideas are so far outside from Craig's literalist conservatism and far more alien to him than Ehrman's. Since Carrier is a mythicist, that places him far outside Craig's familiar territory and Carrier's work with the primary sources of other ancient mythologies and/or supernatural claims appears to result in a broader view and repertoire of historical analogies than the usual ones Craig has encountered by way of his fundamentalist fellows in the New Testament scholar community (e.g. Gary Habermas, Craig Blomberg, Ben Witherington III and the other "usual suspects" who always pop up in the popular fundamentalist apologetics literature). The Carrier debate was also one of those were it was clear that Craig, like in his debate with Ehrman, had categorically refused to debate the reliability of the New Testament on which he bases all his 4 "facts" about the resurrection. Both debates really shows off Craig as the two-bit fundie apologist he is by contrasting his blatantly literalist/inerrantist posturing with those of academics who have trained as historians and know how to argue using historical analogies and the historical method in general, but maybe that's simply more obvious to me as I'm a historian myself (I've noticed similar attitudes towards Craig's performance from physicists and other natural scientists as well as philosophers when Craig's arguments have touched on their areas of expertise).

Craig's responses often seems to be what in my native Danish is known as "Good Day, Fellow!" "Axe Handle!" (an idiom known in Norway and Sweden as well) which is kind of like the colloquial usage of non sequitur in English but more patently absurd and nonsensical and implying that people are talking past each other.

Craig's attempts at not coming off as too obviously stilted and scripted tends to end up with him having to shoehorn/straw man his opponent's actual arguments into one that fits his scripted responses and I suspect that technique may be behind Stephen Law's frustrations when he countered Craig by pointing out that his arguments could be used to defend an evil god/God to which Craig constantly responded with straw men of the actual argument made by law in order to rattle off his prepared material, rather than actually engage the point made by Law (see the source for Law's "double glazing" quote earlier). This is again all too typical of Craig which is why his debates are so pointless to watch if you're looking for actual point/counter point dialogue, rather than Craig (often verbatim) rehashing his well-known views and his endlessly recycled quotes and namedropping. As I've said before, Craig is actually not particularly good at thinking on his feet and his reputation as a debater rests, as far as I can see, mainly on his extensive preparation (researching his opponents and scripting accordingly), showmanship (delivering said script), sleazy debating tactics (listed in the article already), that his obfuscating high filuting lingo impresses those who already agree with him, and finally that high school debating style rhetorical point scoring seems to be the main criterion by which some observers judge who "won" these debates. The latter reminds me most of all of one of the most annoying thing in politics, namely the similar ridiculous focus on point scoring (trying to wrong foot your opponent rhetorically) and zingers, while completely ignoring the actual matters of substance under discussion. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:40, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

desperation

when I watched his debate against Shabir on "what must I do to get saved" I realised one dirty tactic of his:

He argued that "God must be all loving and there are statements in the quran that says Allah does not love "certian group of people" and Shabir replied in a way like "that is to warn people. Allah loves. even if we take it literally, here [reference] bible says God HATES certian people". what do you think was the reply of William?

He found a good strategy, he argued "hate and love are not opposites, not love is the opposite of love. White is not the opposite of black, not black is the opposite of white." Shanir just replied with "look at your dictionaries, they are antonyms"

what my point is: I think WLC too knows his logic was flawed here, even if we understood in the way he wished us, they still are opposites. white is "not black", green is not black, brown is "not black" and thus all of them, including white, are opposites of black.

to eat is not love, to drink is not love, to pee is not love , to hate is not love and thus with his logic, hate is still opposite of lov3 alobgside with to eat, to drink, to pee and almosy any action we can imagine.

I think he knows it well but he said so in otder to save his case or face in the debate.^{— Unsigned, by: Sir artur / talk / contribs}

Interesting. Did WLC literally say: "White is not the opposite of black, not black is the opposite of white."? Those exact words? Because if he did, he's very confused. I'll explain why (admittedly like you already did above, but in different terms) - please bare with me here.

i am sorry , I apologise. I have mistyped here.

he said "not black is the opposite of black" he did not say "not black is the opposite of white". I really intended to quote him but I erred. The following explanation of yours is based on my misquote. but the logic still there.

considering "white is not the opposite if black, not black is opposite of black" white is still black's opposite since white is not black.--Sir artur (talk) 09:52, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The fact is that: the opposite of "white" is "not-white". It's not "not-black". And example of "not-black" is white! Thus, by WLC's logic (assuming those were his exact words), "white" can be the opposite of "white" (since the opposite of "white" just has to be "not-black", and "white" is certainly not black).

Put in symbolic logic instead, what WLC was saying is that: "the opposite of A is ¬B". Which makes no sense, since the opposite of A would likely be ¬A (not ¬B!) But WLC literally said that: "the opposite of A is ¬B", and if we follow that premise, an example of something that's ¬B is A — thus, WLC just said that the opposite of A can be A. Way to attempt basic logic, Dr Craig.

Any chance you could find the source for that statement, Sir artur? That would be amazing. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:07, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I will rewarch the debate and give the link and minute in which they said so.

Apparently the black/white stuff is not from the latest (2009) Shabir Ally/WLC debate, but that debate had a hilarious moment in the Q&A section when Craig, in all seriousness makes the following recommendation:

QUESTION: What advice would you give to those of us who don’t have the time or resources to investigate the historical accuracy of, say, the New Testament? How can we be confident in our beliefs if even scholars and experts are still debating its accuracy and its message?

DR. CRAIG: This is one thing, I must say, I struggle with, too. I am painfully aware that I am debating these issues in front of a bunch of undergraduates, most of whom have probably never even cracked the New Testament much less read it. It is kind of like my going and listening to a pair of medical doctors debate on some tropical disease or something and the best treatment for it. How do you know who is telling the truth? That is why I’ve tried to quote over and over again non-conservative scholars to show that the majority of scholars agree with these points. I guess what I would say to you is I would first of all read the New Testament yourself. That is why I encourage you to get a copy. That is the minimum you have to do – read it yourself. Then I guess I would get a book like Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ and read that and weigh the arguments in it and see if they don’t make sense. But apart from that, I can appreciate how confusing this sort of thing would be to a layperson. But at least you can read the original documents yourselves and pray and ask God to reveal himself to you if he is real. If this is really the truth, if this is really his Son, if he really loves you and wants you to know him then he will make it clear to you. So I would encourage you to treat this not just as an intellectual quest but also as a spiritual search as well.

Craig is seriously claiming that the best ways to evaluate historical accuracy is to read the bible, Lee Strobel's crappy apologetics and/or wait for a divine revelation(!) How come people still takes this guy seriously as an academic? This is also an obvious example of Craig tailoring his level of fundamentalism to suit his audience. Here, the competition was between two religious worldviews so Craig goes into full preacher-mode, but when debating atheists, and especially in fora where he knows that there aren't a huge amount of choir to preach to, Craig instead plays the "serious scholar". ScepticWombat (talk) 14:17, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

The black/white stuff instead seems to come from an earlier Shabir/Ally debate from 2002. The exchange started with Craig claiming a stark difference between a Christian good/forgiving God and a strict/unforgiving Allah to which Ally responded by bringing up Psalm 5:

(Shabir Ally) Now, having said this much I want to offer some comments on some of the criticisms Dr. Craig has levied against the Islamic view. Dr. Craig thinks 1) the Islamic view of God is morally deficient because the Qur’an says that God does not love this or that person. I’ve already shown that, in fact, the threats given in the Qur’an are for the good purpose of bringing human beings back to the right way. But if you want to insist that the literal text says that God does not love these people and that would mean that God is deficient, consider this passage from the Bible in Psalm 5:4-6 where it specifically says that God hates evildoers. So, if we consider then that the Islamic view of God is morally deficient because it says that God hates certain evildoers what are we to say then about the biblical view of God, which says that God hates evildoers.

(Craig) Now, he attempts to turn the tables by saying, “But in the Bible in Psalm 5:4-6, it says that God hates evildoers.” I have two responses to this. First of all, notice that love and hate paradoxically are not contradictories. Indeed we will often speak of someone having a love-hate relationship with someone else. These are not contradictories because you can love a person and yet hate certain aspects of his personality, his actions, what he does, what stands for, and so forth. And in Psalm 5 that’s what it’s talking about. It says in Psalm 5, “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness, evil will not sojourn with you. The boastful will not stand before your eyes. You hate all evil doers.” So, what the psalmist is saying there is that God hates the wickedness and the evil that these people are engaged in but over and over again the Bible affirms that God loves unbelievers, that he loves all persons, and he pleads with unbelievers to repent and to come to him.

(Shabir Ally) Dr. Craig has read my website, and I’m very happy for that, and he has noticed that on my website I have an article in which I have repeated some of the very statements he has quoted from the Qur’an. And I have never denied these statements tonight or any other time. I’m just explaining what these statements mean. When the Qur’an says, or I say, that God does not love evildoers, it just simply means that this is God’s way of reaching out to people and saying, “You have a chance to merit God’s love by not being an evildoer.” Surely, God loves everyone in a certain basic way but if you turn to God repentant, seeking his mercy then he will love you in a more special way. Even Christians believe that God will send some of his enemies, if you like, into hell where they will dwell in that fire for eternity. Are you saying that God loves these people in the same way that he loves those whom he will put in paradise?

Now, Psalm 5:5-6 has been interpreted by Dr. Craig in a way that I am not convinced with. He says that love and hate are not contradictory. In whose language is this? In fact, he says that another way of looking at this is that God does not hate the evildoers but God hates the evil that they do. Yes, the Bible does say that God hates the evil, it says that in Psalm 5:5, “For you O God delight not in wickedness, no evil man remains with you, the arrogant may not stand in your sight. You hate all evildoers.” This verse does not say that God hates the evil; it says that God hates the evildoers. Obviously, God isn’t going to send the evil into hell, God is going to send the evildoers into hell. So I find that explanation disconcerting.

(Craig) Now he says, “But what about in the Psalms where it says God hates evildoers?” As I explained, love and hate are not contradictories and he says, “Well, in what language?” Well, this is simply a point of logic! The opposite of black is not white or the contradictory of black is not white. The contradictory of black is not-black. The contradictory of any p is not-p. So, it is not the contradictory of love to say hate. Indeed we often speak of having love-hate relations with certain individuals, don’t we? The opposite or contradictory of love is not-love. And the Bible never says that God does not love evildoers or wicked people—that is the affirmation of the Qur’an. Moreover, I pointed out that these are poetic books and you cannot base doctrine on poetic expressions, they’re often metaphorical. What God hates, very clearly, is the wickedness and the sin of these people, but we have all these other texts in the Bible about how God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

(Shabir Ally) The Psalms that we look at, in fact, does say that God hates the evildoers. Yes, you can argue logically that the opposite of a word is the not of that word (or the minus of the thing is the opposite of the thing) but that’s to quibble with words. We all know, as I have said, actually, that love and hate are opposites. They are opposites. If you check dictionary of synonyms and antonyms you will find love and hate to be antonyms of each other. Surely, when the Bible says that God hates evildoers, it’s not saying that God hates the sin that they do, it is saying that God hates the persons who do those sins.

Personally, I find the debate between various believers even less interesting than debates between believers and non-believers, but this is illustrative of Craig's incessant word-fucking sophistry. Craig is once again engaging in his usual rhetorical shell game trying to always keep the metaphorical pea one step ahead of his punters (his opponent and especially the audience). One comment accurately pointed out that Craig is using the Humpty Dumpty approach: "When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." Such sophistry, combined with his "the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart trumps any evidence or argument"-nonsense, is why it is ultimately pointless to debate William Lane Craig — except, perhaps, as a useful device for pointing out how ridiculous the whole exercise is and highlight every dirty, underhand debating trick and logical fallacy Craig tries to pull. Not that this is going to do much to dissuade his devoted fans, sadly. ScepticWombat (talk) 14:17, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Great stuff as always, Wombat. I'm actually elated to see that WLC didn't get the basic "A is the opposite of ¬B" wrong after all. In my original post, I think twice I asked in bold if those were his exact statements. Turns out they weren't.

His exact statement, it turns out, was instead an equivocation — whereby he jumped between meanings in order to be able to ensure that no example that could actually be pulled out (except the terminology-laden statement "¬love") could be accepted to be an opposite of "love".

Ignoring, of course, all other logical pitfalls that would come if the whole discussion was framed within symbolic logic. But he skipped that part and just swerved into symbolic logic territory for a second in order to deflect an argument (poorly). Classic red herring, classic equivocation. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:34, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Of all his many logical fallacies (and holy s**t does he like fallacies!), I think Craig's favourite is indeed equivocation. One thing I do like about Craig, though (and possibly the only positive thing about him I can think of) is his website which contains a good search engine and lots of debate transcripts which makes it fairly easy to document and source his BS. ScepticWombat (talk) 14:44, 17 August 2016 (UTC)