William Lane Craig

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I have been on the road a lot for the past week, so I thought I'd play some WLC stuff from YouTube.

First, I streamed his debate with Christopher Hitchens, having heard it trumpeted on Matt Fradd's show. I wasn't impressed with either of them. Hitchens was long on rhetoric but short on substance. Craig did an OK job responding to Hitchens, I guess, but the arguments he brought forth in favor of God's existence by and large didn't strike me as compelling either. I'm not a fan of Kalam or of fine-tuning, and he spent a lot of time on each.

So I figured, what the heck, let's see what he has to say in a deeper discussion of Kalam. I found a video of a WLC/Jimmy Akin discussion of Kalam on YouTube and tried that. I ended up screaming at him. His "arguments" were based on equivocation of terms, redefinition of other terms as needed, and in general an obstinate refusal or inability to see the other point of view.

Color me unimpressed.

[Doom]

He is also a heretic, he rejects the Nicene Creed and endorses both Nestorianism and Monothelitism, rejects divine simplicity, believes that God exists within time and endorses the divine command theory of morality.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

He is also a heretic, he rejects the Nicene Creed and endorses both Nestorianism and Monothelitism, rejects divine simplicity, believes that God exists within time and endorses the divine command theory of morality.

But apart from that, he's a good guy!

You left out that he's a nominalist (although he avoids the name). What a mess.

I found this critique to be helpful: http://reformedarsenal.com/william-lane ... duction-1/

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Strictly speaking, I don't think divine command morality is itself heretical.

[Doom]

It might not be formally heretical but it is moronic and it is not something that Christians have ever endorsed

[Doom]

He is also a heretic, he rejects the Nicene Creed and endorses both Nestorianism and Monothelitism, rejects divine simplicity, believes that God exists within time and endorses the divine command theory of morality.

But apart from that, he's a good guy!

You left out that he's a nominalist (although he avoids the name). What a mess.

I found this critique to be helpful: http://reformedarsenal.com/william-lane ... duction-1/

Well, honestly truth be told I am of the opinion that Protestantism logically requires a nominalist point of view. Standard teachings like forensic justification and sola scriptura simply cannot make sense without assuming a nominalist understanding of reality.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

It might not be formally heretical but it is moronic and it is not something that Christians have ever endorsed

William of Ockham did. Granted, he's not the best example.

[peregrinator]

What's really sad is that there was one time when William of Ockham was right and Pope John XXII was wrong.

[Doom]

At any rate, what is your objection to Kalam and the fine tuning argument? To me the most compelling thing about fine is the fact that there is no real counter argument against it except idiotic ones like the multiverse escape. Astronomer Fred Hoyle, a militant atheist, admitted that he was disturbed by the implications of the fine tuning of the universe “it definitely seems that a higher intelligence has been monkeying with the universe”

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

My objection to Kalam is that I don't think he's demonstrated that a completed infinity is impossible. He thinks he understands transfinite numbers, but he doesn't. He wants to apply "number" univocally to natural numbers and transfinite numbers, and to apply "subtraction" as an operation to each, and then claim that the results are absurd. He won't accept that, if you want to "subtract" infinities, you have to define the process, so "subtraction" is not well-defined on transfinites.

As far as fine-tuning goes:
1) I don't know how you establish the probabilities for each of the constants.
2) It's a god-of-the-gaps argument; if a theory is ever produced that can derive all the dimensionless constants, the argument is in trouble.
3) There's a difference between saying that these are the constants needed for our kind of intelligent life vs. any kind of intelligent being at all.

[Doom]

My objection to Kalam is that I don't think he's demonstrated that a completed infinity is impossible. He thinks he understands transfinite numbers, but he doesn't. He wants to apply "number" univocally to natural numbers and transfinite numbers and to apply "subtraction" as an operation to each, and then claim that the results are absurd. He won't accept that, if you want to "subtract" infinities, you have to define the process, so "subtraction" is not well-defined on transfinites.

As far as fine-tuning goes:
1) I don't know how you establish the probabilities for each of the constants.
2) It's a god-of-the-gaps argument; if a theory is ever produced that can derive all the dimensionless constants, the argument is in trouble.
3) There's a difference between saying that these are the constants needed for our kind of intelligent life vs. any kind of intelligent being at all.

If the fine-tuning argument is so weak, why have atheists responded to it in such an extreme, panicky way, by claiming that there is an infinity of universes and therefore there is going to be at least one where the constants are exactly what is needed for life, probably the biggest violation of Occam's Razor in the history of science? It's the fact that it is atheists respond in this way as if out of fear, that makes it compelling to me. They don't deny the universe is finely tuned, nor do they claim that the fine-tuning is the result of necessity, or that there is a reason for it that we haven't explained, they dodge and weave, with obfuscation and denial, this behavior suggests to me that there is something to it,

To me, the biggest problem with Kalam is that the argument relies on a certain theory of time. There is the A Theory and the B theory of time. The A theory holds that time only exists from one moment to the next, so that only the present exists, and both the past and future do not exist, and the B theory holds that time is a unity and that past, present, and future all exist at the same time and the passage of time is an illusion. Kalam assumes the A theory of time, but I think traditional Christian theology, both Catholic and Protestant, holds to be the B theory. If the B theory is correct, Kalam collapses. It is because Craig holds to the A theory that he believes God is subject to time, and the reliance of Kalam on the A theory of time is why Thomas Aquinas rejected Kalam (though that terminology of A theory and B theory did not exist until 1966).

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I don't think the "infinity of universes" concept arose to deal with the fine-tuning issue. It came up on its own (still ridiculous--apparently we don't believe in the conservation of energy) and was found handy to answer that objection.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Ed Feser, BTW, is a presentist.

[Doom]

I don't think the "infinity of universes" concept arose to deal with the fine-tuning issue. It came up on its own (still ridiculous--apparently we don't believe in the conservation of energy) and was found handy to answer that objection.

I didn't say the concept of the Multiverse originated that way, I said that that this is just about the only response that has been given, and it is an incredibly weak argument. Alvin Plantinga gives the example imagine you are playing poker and one of the players gets a royal flush ten deals in a row and when he is accused of cheating he says “hey, relax, we live in an infinite multiverse and we just happen to be living in one where I get a royal flush on every hand, it's pure chance.” And there is also the problem that even the multiverse itself requires a cause so appealing to the multiverse changes nothing.

The other obfuscation is the the so-called anthropic principle, which is even dumber.

Fred Hoyle whom I quoted earlier as saying that “it seems a higher intelligence has monkeyed with the universe” argued that the “higher intelligence” were aliens. This obviously doesn't answer anything.

[Doom]

Ed Feser, BTW, is a presentist.

But he doesn't hold that God is subject to time, William Lane Craig holds that position for a number of reasons, one of the biggest is that a strict literal interpretation of the Bible doesn't make sense to him otherwise, he thinks that references to God "repenting" of various things, like choosing Saul to be king, don't make sense unless God really did change his mind, and if he changes his mind he must be in time.

[gherkin]

I am a presentist.

I am not at all sure that Catholics have traditionally been B theorists (or what I typically call eternalists, though of course that term can be very misleading--it's got nothing to do with actual [Divine] Eternity in philosophy of time contexts). There is scholarly debate over St. Thomas's position. I am not capable enough with philosophy of time material to have a strong read on him. I just talked to a pretty smart guy last year who was really sure St. Augustine was an eternalist, though I'd always previously thought of him as a presentist. Other traditional philosophers, not sure.

[gherkin]

Craig does his thing and he's been very successful at helping present philosophically informed apologetics to the mostly Protestant faithful over many years. He's also done some actual academic philosophy, and like anyone with a body of such work he has those who find mistakes, oversights, whatnot. But he's a pretty good academic philosopher, IMHO. Not on the level of someone like Alvin Plantinga or Alasdair MacIntyre, but (a) there are few who are and (b) Craig himself would, I am confident, agree that he's not on their level. On the other hand, Plantinga and MacIntyre have been pretty reticent when it comes to producing popular level apologetics.

[Doom]

Alvin Plantinga published “Where the Conflict Really Lies” Which explores the alleged conflict between science and religion, arguing that science poses a bigger threat to atheism than theism, on a popular level. It even has an audiobook edition.

[Closet Catholic]

Craig rejects divine simplicity, and I think that this, so to speak, poisons the well. It is because of this, in my opinion, that he endorses Apollinarianism, the idea that the Divine Logos takes the place of the rational soul in Christ. Here, from his book Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, co-written with J. P. Moreland:

The key to Apollinarius’s ingenious solution to the problem of achieving a true Incarnation lay in his anthropology. Each human being consists of a body (sōma), an animal soul (psychē) and a rational soul (nous). The nous was conceived to be the seat of the sinful instincts. In Jesus, the divine Logos took the place of the human nous and thus became embodied.[1]

So far, Moreland and Craig describes Apollinarius’s view, but later they adopt it, and modify it:

We postulate with Apollinarius that the Logos was the rational soul of Jesus of Nazareth. What Apollinarius correctly discerned was that if we are to avoid a duality of persons in Christ, the man Jesus of Nazareth and the divine Logos must share some common constituent which unites their two individual natures. Chalcedon states that there is a single hypostasis that exemplifies the human and divine natures. That hypostasis is identified as the person Christ is (sic). The question is how to make sense of this. If there exists a complete, individual human nature in Christ and a complete, individual divine nature who is the Logos, then how can there not be two persons? Apollinarius proposed that the Logos replaced the human mind of Jesus, so that there was in Christ a single person, the Logos, who was united with a human body, much as the soul is united with a body in an ordinary human being. On Apollinarius’s view, it is easy to see how a single hypostasis can exemplify the properties proper to each nature.[2]

They go on to explore this further, but to me this perfectly shows that what happens when you deny divine simplicity. On Craig’s view, the Divine Logos has certain ‘properties’ and these are the same in human creatures. But if we affirm divine simplicity, this makes no sense. There are no ‘properties’ in God and God does not ‘possess’ anything. We have rationality and intelligence but this is not an ‘instance’ of what is in God. It is created, and God is not. Moreland and Craig’s Apollinarism only works if we postulate that (1) the Divine Logos ‘has’ properties of intellect, and (2) that these are essentially the same in rational creatures. Thus, on their view, “in assuming a hominid body the Logos brought to Christ’s animal nature just those properties that would serve to make it a complete human nature.”[3] The clearest expression comes when they say that the Logos “already possessed in his preincarnate state all the properties necessary for being a human self. In assuming a hominid body, he brought to it all that was necessary for a complete human nature. For this reason, in Christ the one self-conscious subject who is the Logos possessed divine and human natures that were both complete.”[4]

Craig ends up endorsing heresy because he gets the fundamental question of God wrong.

[1] J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic/InterVarsity, 2003), 598-599, cf. 597-614 (esp. 598-602, 608-610).

[2] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 608.

[3] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 608.

[4] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 609.

[Doom]

Both Craig and Plantings teach what is called "theistic personalism" which is basically the view that God is more or less exactly like us except perfect and more powerful. Classical theism holds that we cannot say what God is,we can only say what he is not, and that he is more unlike is than like us. Theistic personalism taken to its logical extreme leads to a purely material God with a human body, similar to Mormonism.