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  1. Craig seems to fancy himself a modern-day Aquinas, minus the Catholicism of course. I find his arguments, however, even weaker than the Five Ways (except where they restate them, where they are identical and thus no stronger or weaker).
  2.  
  3. Also, he's not saying anything really new here, and the salient features of his arguments are bare assertions, question-begging, and (hardest to spot and therefore most insidious) fallacies of equivocation, composition, and/or division.
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  5. <blockquote>
  6. 1. God provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe. Given the scientific evidence we have about our universe and its origins, and bolstered by arguments presented by philosophers for centuries, it is highly probable that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since the universe, like everything else, could not have merely popped into being without a cause, there must exist a transcendent reality beyond time and space that brought the universe into existence. This entity must therefore be enormously powerful. Only a transcendent, unembodied mind suitably fits that description.
  7. </blockquote>
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  9. This is usually called the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, and it has been broken nine ways from Sunday by much better and smarter people than me, like Dan Barker. Here's the problems I see with it at a glance:
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  11. - "The universe" is not a thing in itself; it is a concept, a set that brackets all things. Even if we are charitable and assume he means more than the observable physical universe here, this still holds. This is a reification fallacy.
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  13. - Bare assertions. Why must it be so? Why <i>couldn't</i> the Universe just have appeared from nothing? Saying it can't, but that something complex and powerful enough to create all existence can, is special pleading and dangerously close to question-begging
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  15. - Craig is being sneaky here with his use of the word "cause." One needs philosophical background to spot this (I needed it pointed out to me by TheoreticalBullshit on Youtube), but there are <i>four</i> kinds of causes in Aristotelian philosophy: formal, final, material, and efficient. When most of us use the word "cause" we mean an efficient cause, an agent that acted to cause something. A material cause is something different; for example, the material cause of a marble statue is simply marble.
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  17. Notice that the Kalaam, and Craig here, very carefully do <i>not</i> state efficient cause but simply cause. A material cause could satisfy this as well. Since he means efficient cause here, or wants us to take that meaning, he is begging the question; the conclusion is being sneakily shoehorned in as a premise.
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  19. <blockquote>
  20. 2. God provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. Contemporary physics has established that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life. That is to say, in order for intelligent, interactive life to exist, the fundamental constants and quantities of nature must fall into an incomprehensibly narrow life-permitting range. There are three competing explanations of this remarkable fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. The first two are highly implausible, given the independence of the fundamental constants and quantities from nature’s laws and the desperate maneuvers needed to save the hypothesis of chance. That leaves design as the best explanation.
  21. </blockquote>
  22.  
  23. "Fine-tuned." You keep using that phrase, Dr. Craig. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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  25. Bluntly put, if the universe were fine-tuned for intelligent life, why is it ninety-nine-point-eighty-hojillion-nines percent of it is near-absolute zero, radiation-blasted, airless, sprawling vacuum?!
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  27. This doesn't <i>deserve</i> a more thorough rubbishing, but if people wish it, simply observe what life <i>does</i> exist, and think about the properties of any putative designer. Evil, incompetent, malicious, intoxicated, insane, or just plain not giving a fuck would fit. Omnibenevolent and omniscient and omnipotent wouldn't. There is a giraffe's recurrent laryngeal nerve with your name on it, Dr. Craig. And a set of embryonic dolphin teeth. And bats with solid bones. And millions and millions of humans with lower-back pain.
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  29. <blockquote>
  30. 3. God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties. Even atheists recognize that some things, for example, the Holocaust, are objectively evil. But if atheism is true, what basis is there for the objectivity of the moral values we affirm? Evolution? Social conditioning? These factors may at best produce in us the subjective feeling that there are objective moral values and duties, but they do nothing to provide a basis for them. If human evolution had taken a different path, a very different set of moral feelings might have evolved. By contrast, God Himself serves as the paradigm of goodness, and His commandments constitute our moral duties. Thus, theism provides a better explanation of objective moral values and duties.
  31. </blockquote>
  32.  
  33. <b>This</b> has got to be the worst of the lot. It deserves a good, mocking, ripping teardown. Anyone with an iota of training in moral philosophy will be taking more piss out of this one than a nightsoil carter's truck.
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  35. - Fallacy of equivocation. "Objective" is taken here to mean "existing outside any mind" rather than "susceptible of evaluation by more minds than the originator." Aside from not having proven that such things as free-standing moral facts outside minds exist -- and how <i>could</i> he as a Divine Command Theorist? -- he is equivocating here.
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  37. - He is also committing a God of the Gaps fallacy. He can't explain how morals arise, therefore goddidit. This is Juggalo apologetics; fuckin' morals, how do <i>they</i> work? From now on I am going to imagine him and his crew wearing ICP makeup.
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  39. - As it so happens, we <i>do</i> have an explanation for not only <i>how</i> morals arise and sustain themselves, but <i>why</i> we have both human universals (murder is bad) and cultural differences (polygamy is sometimes acceptable, sometimes not). Craig, of course, couldn't find his scientific ass if he had a GPS, and anyway he is committed to defending his beliefs at all costs, so the point is moot here. He is not arguing in possession of all the facts, and he refuses to get the facts. He is Not Even Wrong (TM). Do chimpanzees and other higher primates, which clearly show moral behavior and reasoning, get judged in front of the Great White Throne? Are there, even now, the souls of evil chimpanzees screeching and flailing in a lake of hellfire?
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  41. - Ahh, Divine Command Theory, the laziest "moral" system in existence! I would very much like Dr. Craig to explain, without begging the question, how objective moral facts can exist <i>in the greatest mind of all</i>. That is <i>the</i> definition, nay, the Platonic ideal, of subjectivity, in the sense that they are contained <i>in</i> the mind or "essential nature" (call it what you wish, it is no different) of God. DCT can be unpacked and ripped to shreds.
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  43. - For that matter, if Dr. Craig thought God told him to rape and kill, would he? He may object that God would never tell someone to do that, but if he does he has a short memory...as he is on record publicly defending the atrocities in Numbers 31:17-18, which say <i>precisely</i> this. Also, by making a claim either to defend or attack this, you are implicitly invoking an extra-God moral yardstick. Want to know where morals come from, Billybob? Look at the part of you that instinctively revolts when you consider the idea of God telling you to kill and rape. <i>That</i> is where morals come from.
  44.  
  45. - Oh, so morality is part of God's essential nature? Sorry, the Euthyphro Dilemma can't be escaped by pushing it back a step. Is what is moral moral because it is part of God's nature, or is it part of God's nature <i>because</i> it is moral? Where does God get his morals? If morals are simple divine commands, God is supra-moral...or, <b>a-moral</b>
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  47. There's more, but my teeth are grinding, so I'll leave off it for now. All I'll say is DCT makes for moral retards, and I wouldn't trust this slimy sunnuvabitch with a piggy bank.
  48.  
  49. <blockquote>
  50. 4. God provides the best explanation of the historical facts concerning Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Historians have reached something of consensus that the historical Jesus thought that in himself God’s Kingdom had broken into human history, and he carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms as evidence of that fact. Moreover, most historical scholars agree that after his crucifixion Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by a group of female disciples, that various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection despite their every predisposition to the contrary. I can think of no better explanation of these facts than the one the original disciples gave: God raised Jesus from the dead.
  51. </blockquote>
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  53. Not this tripe again! Your Bible can't even agree on <b>who saw the empty tomb</b>, Paul mentions nothing of this, the author of Hebrews seems to be talking about a cosmological set and setting, and the entire passion drama has been found on a Babylonian tablet dating to 700 BC!
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  55. Who's to say this isn't a later addition? The Gospels we have don't appear on the scene until after 150AD (and I strongly suspect Irenaeus of Lyons is the author of John...), the writers make bizarre mistakes of geography and custom no Jew of the day would make, and the early manuscripts are written in insanely high-sounding Greek which no illiterate Aramaic-speaking fishermen could possibly know.
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  57. Not to mention they get quite a bit wrong about Old Testament propechy, quote at least one non-existent or non-canon book as scripture, screw up a Hebrew reading to get TWO donkeys out of one, and last but not least completely botch the timing of the End Of The World (cf. Mat. 10:23).
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  59. I realize comparative mythology, text criticism, or indeed anything any serious Bible scholar is concerned with are not Dr. Craigs' areas of expertise, but he should really do the research before flapping his foodsucker.
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  61. As to "would the disciples die for a lie?" argument, well, just ask any suicide bomber. Er, you can't, since they're a 50-foot-wide circle of fine organic chutney, but you know what I mean.
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  63. <blockquote>
  64. 5. God can be personally known and experienced. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Down through history Christians have found through Jesus a personal acquaintance with God that has transformed their lives.
  65. </blockquote>
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  67. Personal revelation proves nothing. He should go to a sanitarium sometime and ask how many Jesuses (Jesii?) they have in there. He is elevating his senses and memories to the level of God, and committing idolatry, blasphemy, and self-worship with them.
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  69. A few days ago, I came up with something I am tentatively (and somewhat arrogantly, I know) calling "Azuma's Law," this being "All apologetics eventually reduces to presuppositionalism" and its corollary "All apologetics has a dependence, sometimes hidden, on an Ontological Argument."
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