The A-Unicornist
Science. Reason. Culture. Unicorns.
Did William Lane Craig really do that?
I was reading Sean Carroll's post-debate thoughts, and I had remembered seeing William Lane Craig's rephrasing of the Kalam somewhere else just after the debate. Sean confirmed it in his blog, and I just can't believe what I'm reading. Surely a professional philosopher (as he certainly likes to think of himself) can see the barn-door-sized fallacy here. This is the version of the Kalam that Craig used in the debate:
If the universe began to exist, it has a transcendent cause for its existence
The universe began to exist
Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause for its existence
What's changed from previous renditions is the first premise, which used to simply say "Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence". Craig added the term transcendent.
Now, I have personally argued in the past that this much is obvious. We clearly can't be talking about the mundane type of physical causality we actually observe in the universe, because the universe would not have existed. So if the universe came into existence by way of some cause, it must be a cause that's transcendent of physical time, space, and law.
Here's the elephant in the room: there is no evidence whatsoever that transcendent causes exist. Sean remarks that Craig seemed to just take the first premise as a given and focus his energy on the second, and that is a huge mistake from Craig. The existence of transcendent causes, while certainly not impossible, is by no means a well-established and uncontroversial fact. If you think String Theory is speculative, well, you'd be right – but String Theory is at least premised on well-established mathematics and laws of physics; there are many parameters it simply cannot violate and still be a viable theory. But a "transcendent cause", well, what the deuce is that supposed to be, exactly? How does it work? What rules govern its interactions? How can it be observed? It's speculative to the point of being absurd, because by definition it would unbound by the constraints that we conventionally use to clearly define the very concept of causality.
Craig can't just assume that transcendent causes exist in order to prove that the universe began to exist with a transcendent cause. That's a classic case of begging the question, and one so elementary that I'm stupefied that someone who fancies himself an academic philosopher can make a mistake that wouldn't fly in an introductory undergraduate philosophy course.
Read Sean Carroll's full thoughts on the debate here.
Why Christianity is bullshit, part 1: The Bible is stupid
Imagine that you were the perfect, omnipotent, all-knowing Lord and Creator of the universe. You decided that you were going to give one -- just one -- book to humanity. It would be their moral compass, an insight into their nature and into yours, and act as a guide for how they could live rightly and walk a path that would lead their souls into an eternity with you. Obviously, the first thing you'd want to put in there are some totally unscientific, archaic behavioral codes for menstruating women, and for pregnant women after they give birth. You'd want to be sure to help them regulate slavery, and specify how badly they were allowed to beat their slaves. And of course you'd want the book to be chock full of mythology -- a creation myth, a flood myth, a fictional exodus, and hagiographical stories about how your loyal armies killed the shit out of everyone who dared to worship the wrong gods. There's a point here about the Bible that, in my estimation, really canno
How evangelical culture and porn warped my idea of male sex drive
A lot of men my age (I'm 40) get on some kind of sex-boosting pill. Snake oil supplements promising to improve your manliness quotient by 4000% are a dime a dozen. Testosterone replacement clinics are popping up all over the place (which I actually think is a good thing, but not necessarily for sex). At my work, there are basically two types of commercials on the radio: car dealerships promising easy credit approval, and male-enhancing clinics or supplements. Here's the thing about "erectile dysfunction": it's a made-up syndrome used to sell pills. There's no medical criteria for ED; essentially, a man just goes to his doctor and says he's not getting hard when he wants or expects to, or he's not staying hard as long as he wants or expects to, or he's not ejaculating as soon as he wants or too soon or not as often or not at all. Essentially, ED means "I'm not performing the way I expect to be." But where are those expectations comin
Randal Rauser on religious consensus
It's been a really long time since I wrote a post on one of Randal Rauser's arguments. But as luck would have it, it's a lazy Saturday, I was perusing his blog, and I found a recent post of his in which he links to the following video: Do watch the video before continuing, because I'm not going to explain what it's about. Instead, I want to systematically address his arguments as well as discuss his response to me on his blog. Just a heads-up on my own position: I think that the lack of a consensus is a serious problem for Christianity, for several reasons. First, it stands to reason that if holding true belief is integral to one's salvation, and if God loves all his human creations and wants them to be saved, it would be woefully counterproductive for God to allow humans to stumble into a vast number of schisms that often result from disagreements over basic doctrinal beliefs. Sure, some Christians disagree about which day of the week the Sabbath is supp
Mike D
Atheist, humanist, liberal, science lover, metalhead, guitarist, personal trainer, occasionally chef, master of the five-point-palm exploding heart technique.
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