Final Reflections

Some final thought on presuppositionalism and the Pastor Stephen Feinstein - Russell Glasser debate.

First, I wasn’t trying to be intelleckshul or address the pastor’s points by raising objections or refutations - Russell’s original responses were all that was necessary. I was just trying to become familiar with the general concepts, and actual implementation of presuppositional apologetics. It was the pursuit of a personal interest. Reading a proponent’s actual words seemed to be the most direct way of doing this, and Feinstein was the most convenient example at the time. That I spent way too much time on this is the result of several things. Mostly, I was morbidly obsessed with the super-slow-mo train wreck that was Pastor Stephen. He fretted and strutted upon the stage for two rounds, then, when pressed by Russell to start making an argument, sprang into a manic blaze of volubility and circumlocution. He set two contentions for himself: “atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible" and "the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility“, and he didn’t make a case for either. Along the way, he claimed loudly and often that he was winning, that Russell was ducking the issues or smuggling in assertions or using smoke and mirrors, and that logic savages the “atheist position”. Never mind that outside the belief that there is no god, there is no such thing as an “atheist position”.

Secondly, I’m interested in stuff - and presupp qualifies as stuff. I usually think that I can figure stuff out, so the pastor’s opaque writing represented a challenge. I presumed there was something redeeming in the pastor’s words, but, sadly, I’ll admit that I didn’t find it.

Regarding Stephen’s first contention, he appeared to speak many of the words that could be used to make an argument that “some world view is impossible”, but he chose an atheist worldview as the target. Since such a world view exists only in the minds of presuppositionalists, further development of this contention was irrelevant. So most of his lengthy, circuitous, opaque rhetoric was wasted.

Stephen’s second contention was that the “Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility”. Here again, it’s based on a presupposition that god exists. Stephen and Russell argued back and forth about this, with the pastor claiming that god is necessary, and Russell claiming that it’s a needless insertion. The pastor backed up his claim that god is necessary with a claim that “a necessary being is necessarily necessary!“ - thus sending me into fits of laughter. That’s the single most memorable quote of this whole debate.

Rounds four and five didn’t produce any new argument from the pastor - although he threw out the word “deduction” several times. Again, he follows a pattern of putting vaguely relevant words in proximity to each other, and calls it an argument. I can't say that anything meaningful registered. Yes, yes, the presuppositional argument has gone over my head. I get it.

The pastor wrote a sixth, post-debate “Final Reflections” piece, which I read before the end of last year, but I won’t mention it further here, other than to steal its title for this post. His post struck me as a display of poor sportsmanship at best. I don’t recall it clarifying what the pastor had already spent 20,000 words trying to say.

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When Russell invoked a five round limit in round three, it raised the idea that some debate rules should have been agreed to and published before the debate started. The Carrier-O’Connell on-line debate might me used as a example. That debate contained a Joint Statement that described what each party was asserting, and a set of rules that would be followed once the debate commenced:

1. There were four rounds: an opening statement defending their respective sides of the debated proposition, one rebuttal, one counter-rebuttal, then a closing statement.


2. For each round, both participants submittals would be published simultaneously.


3. There was a two week maximum duration between rounds.


4. There was a 3000 word limit per submittal.


5. There were to be no ad-hominem attacks.


6. They agreed to a moderator and four judges.


7. They agreed to adhere to the rulings of the moderator while the debate is in progress.


8. They agreed to a scoring system.

I think that some or all of the Carrier-O’Connell rules would have resulted in a far cleaner, more enjoyable debate here.

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What did I learn from Feinstein-Glasser?

I learned that presupp is based on bare assertion. It assumes a god. You don’t get to question that, because God is “necessary”. In the pastor’s particular implementation of the argument, the overarching goal was to paint a conjectural “atheist world view” as unintelligible, while presenting a Christian world view as intelligible. In neither case was it successful, as both contentions are based on fallacious arguments (a straw man, and the afore-mentioned bare assertion). The pastor wasted about 20,000 words on this endeavor.

In conclusion, I learned that a presupposition of any substantial scope should probably be rejected outright. Presupposing a god is of a scope of the greatest magnitude possible, and requires subjecting it to the greatest skepticism possible.

Whew! Glad that's over!

Pastor Feinstein's Last Gasp

Back in December, I originally imagined that I wouldn’t go through each post of the Feinstein-Glasser Debate point by point ... but I couldn’t help making another flyby over the last few weeks.

I’ve already spent a post on the first half of Pastor Stephen Feinstein’s fifth essay, and hope to put the remainder of this sordid episode to rest here.

Remember, Stephen’s original contentions are "atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible" and "the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility", while Russell Glasser’s is “All else being equal, it’s better not to assume that something is true without good reasons“. If either interlocutor has chosen to change their contention(s) mid-debate, I’m having none of it.

The pastor’s fifth post does not improve the likelihood that anyone will be persuaded by his style of argument. He delivered a lot of words in such a disorganized, argumentative, unappealing and unpersuasive manner that it was nearly impossible to pick out the simple “what” and “why” that we'd normally expect in a debate.

I’ll skip straight to his summary and make snide remarks as appropriate. Trust me - they’re appropriate.

The pastor:

1. From the opening statement I made it clear that this is a battle of worldviews and that our presuppositions would be tested by transcendental logic to see if our worldviews are even possible. Russell has ducked this responsibility by openly admitting that he can take his worldview for granted and therefore does not have to put it to the test.

He sums up his overall strategy, and ironically exposes its weaknesses in the same paragraph. Case in point: he’s constructed this straw world view - the “atheist world view” - that immediately renders arguments built upon it fallacious. One demerit for the pastor.

He says “our presuppositions would be tested by transcendental logic to see if our worldviews are even possible”. This is unclear in several ways. First, his reference to transcendental logic is obscure. If he’s referring to Kant, fine, but we laymen largely don’t (and won’t) care about what philosophers think. If you’re a philosophy student, it’s crucial, but for everyone else, it’s a diversion from practical matters. Another demerit. He gives no hint how testing of presuppositions using transcendental logic would be performed, or how we'd draw a conclusion. One more demerit. And I defy him to restate this thesis in 500 words, and more importantly, to make me care.

2. Atheism is a philosophy like any other, even if Russell does not want to admit it. As a philosophy it is totally inadequate. Two arguments were used (though I hoped to use four): inductive inference and deductive inference. Both shattered Russell’s worldview.

Get a dictionary!
From Merriam-Webster:

Definition of ATHEISM

1 archaic : ungodliness, wickedness
2 a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
b : the doctrine that there is no deity

Two demerits for making shit up.

3. In my second response, I countered Russell’s statement about it being better not to assume things without good reasons. I said it is better not to assume the universe made itself through random processes. Notice that Russell did not object to my use of the word “random” at this point. Like every other atheist, he seemed fine with assuming chance-based origins.

Russell repeatedly corrected him on his misuse of the word "random" (random processes, random chance), but the pastor seems incapable of making the necessary adjustment. This “random process” dodge is just one component of his straw-atheist-world-view, so he probably can’t back off this ridiculous claim without watching his whole argument go up in smoke.

4. Once my third response refuted the possibility of a universe being grounded on chance, only then did Russell try to distance himself from the typical atheistic usage of the word "chance." Readers, this is a very telling point. Russell’s only recourse was to ignore syntax and say I misused the word, when in fact I did not.

See my notes on his point 3, above.

The pastor is trying to excuse or obscure his use of the word "random" by accusing Russell of running away from it, and by blaming Russell for incorrectly claiming that he (Stephen) misused the word. He doesn't address the larger point that his claim of "atheist world view" is bunk. All of this focus on trivia belies the larger point that has no basis in reality.

5. On more than one occasion, I brought up problems based on observation (farmers producing farms, workers making tractors, persons come from persons), which is contrary to everything Russell's position assumes.

He’s getting even more vague here. By making this oblique reference - "Problems based on observations" - he makes it ever more difficult to understand what he's talking about. We're left to either guess at it, to ignore it, or to go back and make a good faith attempt to dig out yet another argument. If he seriously wanted to make his arguments accessible to the public, he could have restated it here in a concise, direct and unambiguous form. Instead, he’s back to trying to get us to (as Russell has said) “mine out arguments that aren’t there”. Another reason that no sane person should spend more that a brief read-through of the pastor’s chaotic blather.

That puts me in the insane category.

Meh.

6. Russell’s attempt to accuse me of circular reasoning was debunked in my third response as I demonstrated his position to be guilty of narrow circularity, whereas mine only had broad circularity (which is impossible for any position to avoid).

I took a look back at his third response. He does not mention “broad” at all, so where he dug that up from, I don't know. If you inter the googlenets, the only obvious reference to "narrow" and "broad" circularity is by theologian John Frame. He appears to be introducing "degrees" of circularity that might be used to make it appear that an apologist's Argument "A" seem more plausible than a counter-apologist's Argument "B", if it can be shown that B is narrowly circular in comparison to A's broad circularity. This is theological wordplay at its most desperate.

Face it, Stephen asserts that God exists. Russell asserts that nature exists and that God is a needless insertion. Both participants require some bedrock principle from which to build a world view. Russell pointed this out many times, but Stephen claims only God can be used as an axiom, and Russell doesn't get to play by those rules. The pastor still refuses to recognize that this is perfect example of special pleading.

One demerit.

7. Russell on more than one occasion attempted to get out of his dilemma by appealing to a magical tiara in such way as to say that is what my position amounts to. This demonstrated a great lack of philosophical precision on his part and that the presuppositional argument from the uniformity of nature was not understood by him. I believe even now, at this point of the debate, he still has not really attempted to refute it. A God that is an absolute person, that is distinct from creation, and sovereign over it, and triune indeed does meet the necessary preconditions for the uniformity of nature. Think on each of the four points, and it does not take a rocket scientist to see how these can account for uniformity. Russell's response? A magical tiara.

The pastor tends to “loop” back on every real or imagined attack, and attempts to clarify and/or defend his position from these attacks. He wastes a lot of words on trivia, while reminding us of some of his more absurd presuppositions. Here he tries to cast Russell’s “magical tiara” as philosophically imprecise. Russell was ridiculing him - plain and simple. The pastor makes it worse by reiterating his own worst assertions: “A God that is an absolute person, that is distinct from creation, and sovereign over it, and triune indeed does meet the necessary preconditions for the uniformity of nature.“

Three demerits for transcendentally bad reasoning.

8.Throughout Russell’s third and fourth response it is clear that he did not understand the necessary vs. contingent argument.

Holy crap.

The pastor thinks his claim that “a necessary being is necessarily necessary!“ is sufficient to overcome all objections. I wonder if he ever proof-read this. He’s gotta be embarrassed.

I’m sure he feels the “necessary vs. contingent argument“ is a knockout winner, but he ignores the bare assertion inherent in it.

Bonus criticism: he jumped the rails at the outset when he declared all of science to be in the realm of philosophy. As if the idea that something is philosophically true has any bearing on the real world. Maybe his mom wouldn't let him play outside with the other kids when he was little. There has to be an explanation.

9. My fourth response was a refutation of everything Russell said in his third response, which was the closest thing he gave in terms of counterarguments. However, his argument was that he is permitted to take his assumptions for granted as long as he hides behind the concept of axioms. He then went back to the tiara again. I removed this misguided attempt throughout the fourth response.

We see a couple of things here:
1. He’s obsessed with every point (see my comments on his note 7)
2. He assumes that his fourth post was immune from objection, refutation and ridicule.

I’ll assume that the pastor would respond to my comment above with a hearty “Oh yeah? Prove it!”. But I won’t let him <snark>smuggle in his smoke and mirrors</snark>. Russell did a fine job in his fourth post. Nuff said.

10.Finally, this last response of mine demonstrated how the laws of logic savage the materialist’s worldview, and I forever buried Russell’s straw man argument against the Christian view of logic.

More delusions of grandeur. How does he think his fifth post savaged anything? I just read it for the umpteenth time, and it was as vacuous and convoluted as anything he’s written so far. And longer. And more tedious.

The pastor may be doing this on purpose - stringing together sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph of loosely related terms in order to insure that no rational human being would have the interest or stamina to decipher and address the points that he believes he’s made. Thus - says he - he wins. Is anyone persuaded by this in the least? I don’t think so.

11. Truly, Russell’s last response was nothing more than bravado. Serious arguments damaged his position, and his best defense was to play it off as though it did not affect him. My hope is that the readers look with keen eye and mind and see that he did not nullify a single argument made by me. They all still loom over him.

Bravado. Hmmm. Could the pastor be “projecting”?

12. I responded to his attempted arguments and I feel they were soundly silenced.

Okay, now I’m absolutely sure he hasn’t proof-read this. Does he mean that he feels his responses were soundly silenced? See how unclear even a single sentence of his can be? Multiply that to arrive at 7800 words. Commence serious drinking immediately.

Bonus criticism: Why should we accept that his feeling that “they were soundly silenced“ relevant? Opinion is cheap - evidence and rational justification should be at a premium.

13. Finally, it only took Russell four days to respond to my opening statement. No argument was made, and so no pressure was placed on him. I responded to him within two days, where I only slightly began to introduce the way the argument was going to go, and it took Russell eight days to respond. I then responded in two days again, and this time I advanced the first argument (inductive inference). In this case, now that the argument was coming against Russell, it took him nearly two weeks to respond. Since I was driving across the country at that time, it took me four days to respond to his eventual post, but then after that it took nearly five weeks to get a response from Russell. I am sorry, but for all of the bravado, why is it taking so long? If these arguments of mine are so easy to dismiss and counter then we shouldn’t be seeing this kind of delayed time. We’re both busy men. The time it takes to receive responses betrays the confidence and bravado in Russell’s responses.

You can see how peevish the pastor comes across in this final point - he picks on the duration between responses as if it impugns his opponent. Good Dog, I could give a shit.

It’s taken me five months to accept the fact that presuppositionalism in general, and Pastor Stephen Feinstein specifically, delight in the “impenetrable quasi-philosophical wankery” that Russell first characterized back in October.

It was a learning experience, but not very uplifting. It’s sobering, even slightly depressing, to see that people that have influence over other people, can be so deluded and so aggressively defensive of their delusion. I suspect that the world is not a better place with people like this in it. We can only know that they walk among us, and that we can cross the street and avoid them if we encounter them. As the centuries pass, my fervent hope is that his brand of wackiness is rarer and rarer, until there are so few exponents of it that they don’t dare poke their flat little heads out of their caves, for fear of being carted off to a hospital for round-the-clock care.

A Necessary Being is Necessarily Necessary!

The pastor’s Round Five claim that “a necessary being is necessarily necessary!“ sums up the whole presupp project. It’s circular, because it’s circularly circular. And it’s a bare assertion, because, well, he said so.

In this debate, Round Three is where the pastor stopped making sense. As Russell points out, Rounds One and Two were spent rope-a-doping. When Russell presses him to make an argument or concede the debate, the pastor responds as if it’s a personal affront, and discards any pretense of making a sensible argument. He instead tries to throw every sciencey, philosophy-ey, theology-ey word or phrase he can muster at Russell.

Round Four was worse.

It doesn’t surprise me that his Round Five effort bounces, skids and rolls along the bottom of the Grand Canyon of bad thinking.

I’m going to occasionally make some disrespectful comments about PSF in this post, so tune out now, if that offends you. I’m several degrees removed from the debate, don’t have a requirement to maintain collegiality, and I feel like venting.

The pastor’s words come off as so aggressively stupid - it pisses me off that a human being with this avowed frame of mind has influence over other human beings. Can you imagine being this guy’s kid??? You’d be screwed up for decades.

Pastor Stephen comes off like an apologetics trash-picker. He’s rummaged through the waste of Van Til, Bahnsen, and probably others. He picked out shiny things that he thinks might be nice to have, and he throws them in his presuppositional shopping cart. When confronted with a counter-apologist, he starts throwing them. At first he exercises care, then he becomes frenzied and empties the cart of all of shiny presuppositional things - picking up others that have fallen nearby to throw over and over again.

Now, on a calmer note, I can still make observations about the pastor’s style with fractionally less vitriol. He comes off as someone that really, REALLY wants to be important. He wants you to nod your head and accept his idea(s) without him having to do the hard work of thinking rationally and organizing the words and phrases in a persuasive manner. I’ll admit, both debaters seemed irritated, but the pastor’s words were often outright peevish, as if something RG said was a personal slight that must be avenged. Such quirks help paint a picture of a human being that is thin-skinned, ill-tempered, argumentative, with a tendency towards not thinking clearly.

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I won’t go into a deep philosophical analysis of his points, because by this time in the debate, the pastors’s words are a jumbled mess. But there IS some fun to be had here. Some of his individual phrases or sentences are complete nonsense, and depending on your sense of humor, downright funny.

Let’s have a look:

I thank you for your response, and given its length, I may not be able to be as brief as I would have liked.

Russell spent about 4956 words responding to Stephens 5455 word fourth round post (discarding the administrivia at the outset of each post). What is he complaining about? This very first sentence gives us an indication of how close these guys are to crapping all over each other. Complaining about the length of each other’s posts - they both did it - is the least of their problems. The pastor has two points to justify, Russell has one. It shouldn’t take that long. Instead, Stephen will spend around 7800 words on this lengthy reply, and won’t move the ball forward an inch.

I did prove that atheism was impossible, and therefore by your own statement in your second response, I claimed victory.

That's delusional. The pastor proved nothing, so his claim of victory is based on ... nothing. We see this a lot in rounds four and five. He thinks he’s made an argument, but darned if I can detect it. (Remember Russell in round four? “...you’ve spent your most recent post trying to get people to reread the third post to mine out arguments that aren’t there.“) the pastor says argument-y sounding things, but they don't reach a conclusion based on rational or evidential support. For instance, he went on and on about induction in round three, but the closest he gets to developing a case that it renders lack of belief in the supernatural impossible, is to say that it renders lack of belief in the supernatural impossible. He doesn’t do the hard work of showing how the claim is believable.

I am starting to think that the presuppositional argument is going over your head

This is a riot.

Russell’s response: “A scientific paper that bragged that its readers are too dumb to comprehend the author’s wisdom would fail to advance its subject.“

I noticed that this prior quote of Stephen’s, and several others, specifically caught Russell’s eye as well as mine, so I won’t repeat the others. I do want to quote a couple of different gems, however.

...you committed the red herring fallacy by putting the same argument you made in your second post, namely that I need to demonstrate that the existence of the Biblical God avoids the “so-called” arbitrariness.

This one pretty much confirms just how self-unaware the pastor is. It is not a red herring to request that Stephen demonstrate the existence of the biblical God. It is at the very core of Stephen’s argument, that this God exists. He doesn’t seem to recognize that we (everyone, theist and atheist alike) need to have good reasons for believing something is true. He hasn’t provided it. The core of his whole argument is still, due to his inaction, mere conjecture.

By definition, the universe cannot be self-existent

I picked out this snippet because of the modifier “by definition”. People like to say “by definition” without any idea of what the definition is or how it can be associated with the word that they’re claiming the definition applies to. It appears that the pastor wants us to believe that the universe cannot be self-existent, so that he can use that in building a case for some mysterious “other” that can swoop in out of the timeless, spaceless void and create it. So, the phrase “by definition” acts as a magic get-out-of-jail-free card that protects him from having to actually prove what he claims. Crafty!

...a necessary being is necessarily necessary!

This is now my favorite apologetics saying of all time! Do I need to explain this? Didn't think so

Is the "Argument from Filibuster" a thing?

Again, mad props to Russell Glasser at the Atheist Experience for having the patience and perseverance to engage in a debate with Pastor Stephen Feinstein , and to deliver calm, mature and rational responses. His final post is worthy of framing.

Second, it would be presumptuous of me to pick up the commentary of Pastor Stephen Feinstein's delightful brand of presuppositional apologetics without a disclaimer and a tip of the hat to Deacon Duncan at Evangelical Realism. The disclaimer is that I'm not as smart, insightful or as good a writer as Deacon, so I don't presume to replace or even supplement him in any way. The tip of the hat is that, if you're interested in examples of fine counter-apologetics, you must visit his blog. Even though he's on indefinite hiatus, the place is full of treasure - much of which I'm still mining.

Although I've made the odd comment on Evangelical Realism, and published the odd post here regarding this extraordinarily weird display of apologetics, I decided to reboot in order to bring the series to a close. Thus, a second installment.

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Today's business:

With three full rounds and the opening paragraphs of the fourth round under my belt, it was apparent that I could say a slight bit more about the first half of the debate than I did last time.

Pastor Stephen Feinstein started his debate with Russell Glasser by stating

“I will give a general opening that will describe ... why I believe atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible.“ and “I argue from the outset for the Christian position only, and I affirm that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility.“

These two statements serve, as well as any he made, as his main arguments.

It’s apparent that the pastor is attempting to follow the presuppositionalist program of apologetics, what with the focus on epistemology, worldviews and the copious use of, and wrangling over the implications of the word ”presupposition”.

Additionally, some "themes" seem to have emerged from the pastor’s excessive verbiage, whether by accident or on purpose. I’ll label them as follows:

Theme #1: The discussion of and arguments about science belong in the realm of philosophy, especially epistemology.

Theme #2: The atheistic random-chance universe makes the uniformity of nature impossible.

Theme #3: The problem of induction renders science impossible.

Theme #4: Atheistic preconditions cannot be justified, rendering knowledge built on them invalid.

Theme #5: The Christian God and a worldview built on him renders science and knowledge rational and valid.

There may be more themes, or I may have partitioned these incorrectly, but I’m comfortable in using them to describe where the pastor has been in the debate so far.

For a rational empiricist like myself - the pastor insists on labeling people, so I’m going down that rat hole as well - for the rational empiricist, we find characteristics in the real world that demonstrate that the pastor's themes are evidentially or rationally unsupported, or that contradict those themes in part or in whole. Let me label them as follows:

CounterTheme #1: The discussion of and arguments about science may be exercised in the realm of philosophy, but the practice and products of science are in the real world, and deal with real things. They are in the physical realm, in spite of the pastor’s claims to the contrary.

CounterTheme #2: Atheists individually have worldviews, but a unified “atheist worldview” held by the majority of atheists is a fabrication. Atheists only share a position about one topic - the existence of God. Consequently, a “random-chance universe” - a hypothetical construct fabricated by apologists for just these kinds of arguments - is erroneously attributed to atheists as a group. Neither the “atheist worldview” generalization nor the ascribed belief in the “random-chance universe“ has anything to do with reality.

CounterTheme #3: Induction is a way that we reason from particulars to generalities, but it's not the only way that people learn. Karl Popper would argue induction is a myth altogether, and that science relies on criticism and correction.

Personally, the philosophical “problem of induction” only seems troublesome if someone is attempting to arrive at “absolute truth” solely by inductive inference - without sense experience, trial-and-error, deduction, or any other means of gaining knowledge. So on that point alone, the pastor's criticism misses badly. Additionally, since absolutes are so rarely encountered in real life, the problem of induction, even if it's the sole means used to gain knowledge, rarely presents an impediment to acquiring reasonably practical, imperfect knowledge.

CounterTheme #4: Everyone makes unsupported assumptions. If naturalistic preconditions cannot be said to be axiomatic, then neither can supernaturalistic ones. It's extraordinarily unlikely that some compelling case can be made for unwarranted supernaturalistic presuppositions - and yet the Pastor's whole case rests on it.

CounterTheme #5: God is an obsolete hypothetical explanation for aspects of reality that have been explained better in other ways. He/she/it/they do not appear in the world, and exert no effect on physical reality that cannot be explained equally or better by natural means.

Let me point out again, Russell and Deacon both made most, if not more counterpoints than I just listed. I didn't cheat by referring back to them - so forgive me wherever I missed a point that you thought was prominent.

Face it, the pastor is not good at this presupp shtick. He didn't make concise persuasive arguments. What he did was more akin to a filibuster - that's why I use the term "theme" in favor of the expected concept "argument". At the very least, he could have been more persuasive by stating Themes 1 through 4 as premises, with Theme 5 as the conclusion. He would have had to add supporting warrants and subtract much of his unfocused filibuster in order to clearly make his case, but it was possible. Instead, his unwillingness or inability to get to the point really cost him readers, respect from his atheist antagonists and souls for Jesus.

The Pastor bores another interested party to tears

In my late twenties, I read Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Number of the Beast” - a science fiction novel that explored travel through extra dimensions. It held my interest through about 80% of the book, but I couldn’t finish it. As much as I liked Heinlein, the last 75-100 pages were excruciating. They droned on and on. Pastor Stephen Feinstein is like that in his debate with Russell Glasser .

I started reading the individual debate posts during the first week of November of last year, and soon discovered that Deacon Duncan was doing a much more thorough job at Evangelical Realism than I ever would, so I dropped an attempt at writing this up. Then, a few weeks ago, Deacon burned out after reviewing the Pastor’s 4th post, and kinda left me feeling unfulfilled. So here I am, looking to get closure.

So, what's left me feeling so empty? Wellllll... It’s like this, doc:

Round One Recap

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The Pastor’s first post throws down the gauntlet, somewhat, by exclaiming

“I believe atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible" [and] "I affirm that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility."

The Christian Worldview includes, of course, belief in a triune God. Stephen professes his belief in this, so we have his position clearly stated, and we expect his arguments to launch from there. He doesn’t launch them in this post, however.

Russell’s first post counters with a rejection of the Pastor’s claim that “Atheism possesses a distinct view of reality (materialism)” etc ... but he admits that “I personally do lean towards materialism, humanism, and a scientific approach to learning about the world” ... he describes himself as an “atheist humanist scientific skeptic”

He goes on to contrast his position in comparison to Stephen’s as

“All else being equal, it’s better not to assume that something is true without good reasons.”

Russell then closes with what he feels the pastor needs to do to win the debate, specifically:

“Give me some good reasons why I should view God, as you define him, as a being that exists; OR, Make me understand that it is foolish to seek reasons for anything, and it’s a good idea to just believe something like your god for no reason.”

This is a fairly uncontroversial beginning.

Round Two

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In his second post, the pastor gives more of “I’m gonna do this”, but no actual doing of the “this”. There are several thousand words in this post, but no detectable argument supporting his round one claims that “atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible" and "the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility”.

Russell detects this, and calls him out:

“if you have any interest whatsoever in definitively showing me and other atheists that we hold an untenable position, then you’re going to have to give me some motivation to accept your assumptions over mine. If you can’t do that, then by your own prior promises, you will have lost.”

This apparently hurts the pastor’s feelings.

Round Three Recap

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It gets weird in Round Three.

In a lot of formal debate settings, the opponents go out of their way to be polite and respectful. I believe that politeness pays dividends, because the word “atheist” is usually painted as all sorts of bad: baby-eating, church-burning, religious rights-oppressing atheists. Face it, a calm explanation that there is nothing supernatural going on in the world may convince a believer, or it may not. Yelling at them or ridiculing them beyond their tolerance for ridicule probably makes them more entrenched in their belief, so Russell's being fairly restrained so far.

In this debate, however, the pastor just starts spewing unfocused nonsense. It ramps up significantly in this third post, and then gets worse in following posts. It makes it hard to be respectful of the pastor from here on out. He just really sucks at this. On to the recap:

The pastor immediately whines:

"I am disappointed in your response [...] your condescending remark about me spending many paragraphs on something trivial was unwarranted and unnecessary."

It would be difficult to be won over by this display of thin skin.

Then there’s more emotional gnashing of teeth:

you are doing exactly what I feared you would do“ [...followed by an accusation that Russell is...] “putting forth smoke and mirrors to try to get out of the trap that your position puts you in”

This was said in spite of the fact that he makes no effort to illustrate what the smoke and mirrors are, nor what the trap is that Russell is allegedly in. Thus we have the beginnings of the pattern that will reappear through the rest of the debate. Whine, accuse, claim victory, interject incomplete philosophical claims - and do it in a haphazard order that makes it difficult to understand what he’s getting at. He went on like this for about 30 more paragraphs. If you didn't know better, you'd suspect he was being purposely obtuse.

To give you an idea of how verbose this is: In a “normal” debate, opening statements might be the longest of all spoken segments. The subsequent rebuttal, objection, and closing segments tend to get shorter as the debate progresses. The opposite is true here. The pastor expends about 5500 words (not counting his salutation) - or about 60% more than William Lane Craig might use in his entire opening - and longest - statement.

The pastor also trotted out some other themes that would reoccur:

“atheistic universe where the governing principle is random chance” ... “transcendental logic” ... “ducking the issue of presuppositions"

Notable crazy rantlet:

"if your presuppositions can be shown to be impossible, then does not your entire position come tumbling down? The answer is yes, whether you like it or not."

Tellingly, he doesn't recognize that he hasn't demonstrated that Russell's presuppositions are impossible, and he never presents a plausible alternative. It's as if he has an imaginary debate going on in his head, and we don't get to see his best work.

... "inductive inference / uniformity of nature" ... "transcendental precondition” ... On and on and on these buzz-phrases roll - a few wrapped in intelligible sentences, but few in intelligible paragraphs.

What he appears to be doing is saying that inductive and deductive inferences are unreliable because they rely on presuppositions, and that presuppositions must be explained. He conveniently forgets that his whole “God” alternative is an unwarranted presupposition.

In his half of the round Russell calls him out, on his presupposition of God, his misuse of the word “random” and his erroneous “atheism implies a random universe“ attack.

Finally, Russell summarizes the Round Three exchange nicely:

1. Both Stephen and Russell should agree that some concepts are axiomatic, requiring no explanation. For Stephen, the axiom is God. For Russell, reality and logic are axiomatic, and God is a needless insertion.

2. Stephen cannot assert that the existence of logic requires justification, unless he also attempts to offer a justification of God. If he believes that this is unnecessary, then he should grant point.

3. If the assumptions for all parties are arbitrary then Russell should win this debate, since Stephen failed to meet the burden of proof that he implied when stating that atheism is impossible. If the belief in God is merely Stephen’s preferred assumption, then it is not necessary, and may be discarded due to Occam’s Razor.

4. Stephen’s claim that a godless universe must be a random universe (where “random” is used to mean “inconsistent,” “illogical,” or “haphazard,” as opposed to merely “undirected”) requires justification, otherwise I reject the premise.

5. Stephen should justify how a God would go about “creating” the laws of logic, without himself being subject to logic.

Next time, I’ll break out Round Four separately, and attempt to pick up where Deacon left off.

Why the First Cause argument doesn't work

My previous post - “Show me the Money” - implies that I think direct evidence is required to remove all doubt on the existence of something that has been claimed. To address the other channel by which a claim can be agreed upon, let me discuss “rational” argument using the example of the Argument from First Cause . Of course, people "debating” the existence of God - or any other supernatural contrivance - will generally not have a rational argument in the sense that I use it here, but it is worth treating it as if they do.

The arguments for the existence of God often share some common characteristics:

1) They rely on ignorance. This is not meant to demean anyone - we are all ignorant about the vast number of topics there are to have knowledge of, let alone those things that we don't know can be known. The First Cause argument relies on ignorance of the cause of the universe, and can be dumbed down to “we can’t explain existence, therefore my preferred explanation applies”. The fact that we can’t explain existence does not trouble me personally, so it could be that the ability to remain untroubled by this is one of the personality traits that make non-belief so easy for me. Personal trivia aside, assume that no one knows what caused the universe. What would motivate someone to think that our absence of knowledge can only lead us to a conclusion that “God” is responsible? Not only does the assumption that something other than what can be observed must be the cause **complicate** the explanation instead of simplify it, it then is made worse by slapping on all sorts of other characteristics that magically parallel the proponent’s personal beliefs and (most often) their chosen religion. That same approach also ignores all other explanations - supernatural and natural. More than that, we really have an argument from ignorance, a false choice, a bare (unsupported) assertion, some circularity and a violation of Occam’s Razor - all in one argument.

2) Having just mentioned the False Choice fallacy, let’s discuss it next. Assuming (as we are) that no one knows what caused the universe, the possible explanation should not be limited by a personal preference. For instance, why not Zeus? Why not David Berkowitz’s neighbor’s dog Sam? Why not a cosmic joke? Why not a quantum fluctuation? The cold reality is that the universe is as it is, and none of our personal preferences or biases are relevant in the grand scheme of things. We may someday understand where our observable universe came from. We may never understand it. That we might like it to be a certain way - for instance with an omnipotent father figure in charge - will not and can not have any bearing on reality. So the potential explanations for the question “what caused the universe” are logically open to anything that is not logically impossible. It is not logically impossible that a God exists, but it is extremely more improbable than a purely natural explanation. No matter how improbable the universe may truly be, the existence of a system beyond the universe, in which a God can exist in order to create and be in charge, is enormously more unlikely. All purely natural explanations are thus more likely.

3) The Bare Assertion Fallacy is an “arbitrary dogmatic statement which the speaker expects the listener to accept as valid”. No evidence or rational argument is offered, that’s just the way it is because I said so.

Obviously, you can reject this without further discussion. They’re just expecting you to accept them as an authority. Unless you have reason to, this is a non-starter.

4) Circular Reasoning is a direct outcome of Bare Assertion. In fact, the two are joined at the hip. You can’t assume in a premise, what you’re trying to arrive at as a conclusion.

’Nuff said.

5) Since I already smuggled Occam's Razor into the discussion of False Choice, let me give it a slightly better treatment. Using the example that Dr. William Lane Craig often uses - that the complexity of the universe is too great to be explained by natural means - let’s examine how God might be a more likely (probable) conclusion. As we know, “...among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected”. This is just a matter of probability. If you have a one-in-six chance of rolling a six using a single die, than adding a second die lowers the probability that a single throw will produce a six. There is one way to roll a six using one die - or 16.67% probability. Two dice produce 5 ways out of 36 in which to roll a six - or 13.89%. This is over-simplistic, but makes the point. To really put an exclamation point on it, you can argue that God is a die that is more complicated than the universe, thus requiring more faces, thus lowering the odds of rolling that six even further.

Summary: Arguments about God don't prove anything. More generally, arguments between people, and organized debates don’t prove anything - they just attempt to persuade the participants or audience to change their opinions. After all is said and done, we’re still stuck with the fact that the universe does not care about our opinions.

Presupposing that a Christian God exists

Before I stumbled across Deacon Duncan's review of the debate between Russell Glasser and Pastor Stephen Feinstein, I'd started reading the debate (my prior comments are here and here), and was planning a more elaborate review. Since Duncan is doing this already, I'm relieved of that motivation, and can record my take-away for handy recall, should I ever need it. To re-establish the context of the Glasser-Feinstein debate, Glasser is an atheist, Feinstein is a presuppositionalist apologist, and the topic - which I never saw declared, but which I infer from Feinstein's opening post - is that a Christian worldview is correct.

Pastor Stephen Feinstein asserts that without the Christian God, intelligibility is not possible, thus atheism is impossible. By this last phrase, I believe he means that the lack of belief in a personal god - atheism - cannot be true. His words:

I affirm that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that is possible given the preconditions of intelligibility

In a nutshell, Feinstein's argument reduces to an unsupported assertion that the Christian God exists.

My summary - which draws on my own thoughts as well as Duncan's - is this:

Reality must present itself in a way that's capable of being comprehended by hypothetical observers if it is to be understood - it must be "self-consistent". Its features, their attributes, behaviors and relationships must be repeatable under repeatable conditions in order to be understood. From observations that we actual observers make, we can then make inferences about their attributes, behaviors and relationships that might pertain under varying conditions. From those inferences, we then can derive fundamental conventions ("laws" or "axioms") upon which other knowledge items are constructed. Introducing unobserved features into this framework makes the framework inconsistent and thus unintelligible. A god is just such an unobserved feature.

A god or other unobservable feature is not logically ruled out in this scheme, but is instead made unnecessary due to the principle of parsimony ("Occam's Razor"). All other things being equal, the simpler scheme is to be preferred.

It's that simple.

Objective and subjective existence

I was going to post a few entries on the Pastor Stephen Feinstein-Russell Glasser web debate on the existence of God, but Deacon Duncan at Evangelical Realism is WAY AHEAD of me, and does a way better job. I may still make a few small comments - it's my first serious look at "presuppositional apologetics" - but only to add anything that I think is missing, or to reinterpret some of the lengthier passages into smaller units that work for me. Links to all rounds of the debate can be found on this post at the Atheist Experience website.

Jumping forward into Duncan's second post on the debate, he summarizes the ideas of objective and subjective existence nicely in the following two paragraphs.

This “real” reality is what we could and should call material reality—not in the sense that it’s made of atoms (because atoms are real, and what are they made of, eh?), but in the sense that it exists in and of itself, as the necessary being. Fictional realities are not material realities, because their whole existence is contingent on the subjective perceptions and thoughts of some observer who is thinking about them. Santa Claus, for example, “exists” only in a fictional “reality” whose existence depends on people thinking about him and telling kids about him and so on. If we could wave a magic wand that would make everyone forget about him, and make every reference disappear from our art and literature and so on, then his “existence” would likewise cease, because it’s contingent on the perceptions of at least one observer.

Gravity, on the other hand, is an aspect of material reality, even though it’s not made of atoms. Wave the same magic wand, make people forget about gravity, delete every reference to gravity from literature and art, even render every sentient being in the universe unconscious so they can’t think about anything, and planets will still orbit their stars and rain will still fall down. Material reality does not depend on the perceptions of any third party, it exists in and of itself.

There are two implications raised here. One - that a proposition considered to "objectively exist" does, in fact, objectively exist if it can be discovered (or rediscovered) whether or not humans have knowledge of it, or have written of it. For instance, there is gravity on Mars as well as in the Eta Carinae star system. We can say gravity exists because it is consistent in all contexts that we laypeople care about. Two - and more relevant to me today - is that the concept of objective existence leads us to the logical conclusion that "gods" do not exist. In other words, the concepts of Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, Odin, Krishna, Horus would not exist here, or across the universe, without humans to supply them. An alien life form, if it exists, might have a concept of a higher power, but it would be nothing like the stories we have been telling ourselves for thousands of years.

I think that, as much as any thought experiment you can perform about a god, is sufficient to demonstrate the absurdity of the claim that a personal god exists.

Atheism is impossible

I'm getting ready to read the debate between Russell Glasser and Pastor Stephen, but in the first few paragraphs by Pastor Stephen, I was struck by the statement "...I believe atheism is untenable, irrational, and ultimately impossible."

This is worth a quick comment before getting back to my reading:

The idea that "atheism is ... impossible" stands out like the sun on a clear day. Atheism - the lack of belief in a personal deity, is by all measures, MORE likely to be a correct belief than theism, because a universe that does not include the complications of a parallel supernatural system to provide a basis for supernatural beings such as God, is inherently simpler and more likely per Occam's razor.

This ought to be interesting hearing the arguments on how it isn't!

Another imaginary debate

I'm doing this again.

A year ago, I fabricated an imaginary opening statement for an imaginary debate against Dr. Wm. Lane Craig on the topic "Does God Exist?"

As before, the debate that I chose as a template was the 1995 contest between Dr. Craig and Massimo Pigliucci, held at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. It will probably be useful to read Dr. Craig's opening statement there in order to understand the context in which my statement is made.

The differences between my efforts then and now are 1) I've spent more time studying the debate transcript; 2) I've (hopefully) become more proficient at organizing and articulating my arguments; and 3) I "present" my opening statement second, after Dr. Craig has (hypothetically) already spoken first.

Finally, I've timed it, and the whole thing can be spoken within 20 minutes, just like the debates you see Dr. Craig most commonly participating in.

Here it is:

---

Salutation

Thank you for being here tonight, and thank you for allowing me to spend the next couple of hours with you. Let me especially extend my thanks to Dr. William Lane Craig, who, once again, serves as my imaginary opponent in this imaginary debate.

The question before us here tonight is "Does God Exist?"

Dr. Craig has just given his five arguments that there is a God. I will now show how Dr. Craig's arguments fail, and that belief in the proposition that there is a God is not justified.

First, I'd like to make a few general comments about what we're doing.

The Purpose of Debate and the Burden of Proof

Debates like this one are the presentation of arguments. They're more public, more organized arguments than you have around the kitchen table, but they are arguments, none the less. The purpose of our debate here tonight is primarily trying to persuade you - the audience - that one of us has presented the more compelling case in support of their position. Debates do not, however, result in the establishment of fact, and we will not do so tonight, unless Dr. Craig produces the subject in contention - God - before we leave the auditorium.

With that in mind, let me point out one notably relevant error - among the many that I'll be addressing later - that Dr. Craig made in his opening statement. He says that "atheists have tried to disprove the existence of God for years without success". That may be his interpretation of discourse between believers and non-believers, but reasonable people do not go around trying to disprove every unsupported assertion that is thrown into the air. We'd never have time to live our lives, if that were the case. Tonight, Dr. Craig must make a persuasive case that God exists. I must make a persuasive case that Dr. Craig's arguments fail.

That's all we have to do.

There's no value in attempting to disprove God, because he, she or it is so far ahead of us in that endeavor - having done such a superb job through its own inaction and absence.

That's a long way around saying "You can ignore Dr. Craigs admonishment that 'atheists have tried to disprove the existence of God for years without success' ". That claim is just a straw man being used to falsely give the impression that the failure to disprove God's existence makes God's existence somehow more probable.

Definition of God

In this debate, I am assuming that the God we are talking about is the creator of the universe, in the manner that Dr. Craig implied when he stated that the cause of the universe "must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power [...and...] it must also be personal." It is, at the end of the day, the Christian God that Dr. Craig is arguing for. I assume that his arguments are for a real-world instance of this God, that can physically interact with the world in unlimited ways.

Terms

Belief and Knowledge

I'd like to comment on belief, knowledge and certainty as well.

It is important to distinguish between what we believe and what we know, so when I say I believe something tonight, I mean that I accept with some degree of certainty that the proposition that I claim to believe is true, but without having any evidence or rational justification. For instance, I believe this audience is of good character without having an ounce of evidence. Please don't let me down!

When I say I know something, in contrast, I am expressing an attitude about a topic, in a way similar to belief, but "knowing" implies that I have evidence and/or sound rational justification for that attitude, and that I am extremely certain of the topic's truth.

Certainty

Now, since absolute knowledge is probably unobtainable, I will adopt that term - certainty - in a way that I hope will be useful in indicating to you my confidence that whatever I am discussing at that moment is true. Rather than saying "I know", I am better served in using a scale to define how certain I am of the topic's truth. For example, I could adopt some rules of thumb such as: saying that I'm "somewhat certain" means that I'm 60% confident that a proposition is true; "extremely certain" means 99% confidence, and "virtually certain" means 99.9999% confidence. That's useful because it stresses that I don't ever know things with absolute certainty, but that I can indicate my relative degree of certainty. If I say "I know" something, forgive me, I really mean I'm "virtually certain".

Why General Arguments for the Existence of God fail

Lack of evidence

Let me say a few words about the general arguments for God. The most glaring omission in ANY case for God is the absence of evidence. An appearance by God to the people of the world in this day and age would settle the matter for all of human history. The God being claimed should certainly be powerful enough to give us an unambiguous sign, but she never does. Is this God not capable, does she not care, or is she too busy? Are there other distractions or constraints that prevent her from this admittedly simple task? If she does exist, we don't know. That's why we're left to debate her.

God is unnecessary

Another general error is the thought that God is necessary in explaining the world. Ancient gods were originally fabricated to explain why there is thunder. But we know where thunder comes from now. Over and over those phenomena that required God as an explanation have been subsequently explained by science. Not once has a scientific explanation for a phenomenon been subsequently replaced by an explanation from God. Not once.

God is incoherent

There are other troubling problems raised when you invoke God as an explanation for something that you can't presently explain. These include the questions "who designed the designer" and "who created the creator?" That way lies an infinite regress - the question repeats itself forever. If the explanation is that "God is eternal" - implying that he didn't require creation - then why is he exempt from being created, and the universe is not? That way lies special pleading, and we are owed an explanation of why one thing can be eternal and another can't

Why Dr. Craig's arguments fail

The Cosmological Argument

Dr. Craig's usual debate arguments are equally unhelpful in establishing the existence of God.

His Cosmological argument is a more elaborate and more fragile version of the argument from first cause. He states that "Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause". He's simply saying because we can imagine the universe being another way - that it's not necessary that the universe exist or be the way it is - we must then conclude that the cause is external. But he doesn't explain why one must arrive at this conclusion, how the external cause can itself exist, or how it can bring this universe into existence while remaining external, yet retaining its ability to interact with the allegedly separate universe it created.

Another notable gap - a figurative canyon - in his reasoning about this hypothetical "first cause" is how the supernatural thing that he describes refers to the Christian God depicted in the Old and New Testaments. The entity he argues for could be applicable to ANY supernatural scheme that you can devise, not just Christianity.

The Fine-Tuning Argument

Dr. Craig's second argument - that the "chances that the universe should be life-permitting are so infinitesimal as to be incomprehensible and incalculable", thus leading us to conclude that God is responsible, is also false.

The fact that it is not impossible the we are here is the first clue we have that the probability claimed by Dr. Craig is not relevant. If it were impossible that life exist, and yet we do exist, then THAT would be evidence of something extraordinary. But it IS possible for the universe to have the physical constants that it does, the universe DOES have those physical constants, and we ARE here. This is wonderful, awesome, majestic - every superlative imaginable! But it isn't evidence of God.

Stated a different way, if God existed, then there is no need for the at least 410 million trillion trillion cubic light years of space, at least one hundred billion trillion stars, at least 13.7 billion years of time in order to produce what, by every measure, appears purely natural. If God existed, only one patch of space and time is required to contain his creation. No stars or planets are needed because the God we're talking about is so powerful that it can create beings that don't need warmth, air or nourishment. Only a single lifetime is needed to allow judgement and consignment of the created beings to reward or punishment at his whim. The universe can be discarded after one lifetime is over. The excess space, time, matter and energy are not needed.

What we have instead is a universe that looks as you would expect if there were no God. It was once densely packed, high-temperature matter and energy. Hydrogen, helium and a trace of few other elements soon appeared. Stars formed, then galaxies and planets, and soon Snooki was having a baby.

It may be a blow to our egos that we are the result of natural processes and not God's carefully crafted creation, but it is the only conclusion we can make. That doesn't preclude the awe and wonder we have about the universe, and it similarly does not diminish the profound sense of love, purpose and duty that we can feel about each other and our fellow creatures.

That we feel overwhelmed at the grandeur of the universe and immensely grateful for our existence is still not a reason to conclude that there is a God. We are misdirecting our emotions if we do that.

Again, just to be consistent, Dr. Craig fails here to link this hypothetical supernatural fine-tuner to the Christian God depicted in the Old and New Testaments.

Objective morals

Dr. Craig observes that "If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Many theists and atheists alike concur on this point".

I couldn't agree more.

What we have - and you may have detected this in my counter-arguments up to this point - is a universe that evolves from simpler to more complex. The same holds true for life itself: polymers form amino acids, which form proteins, all in natural processes. Similarly, the behaviors that animals exhibit range from simple - in simpler, less social animals - to complex in the more social species.

That brings me to morals and ethics. Living things cooperate. Species tend to adopt behaviors that help propagate them. They tend to pass on those behaviors that were beneficial to their descendants. The behaviors that result in failure to compete against other lifeforms don't get passed on, because those individuals, on average, die before they produce as many offspring as those practicing the more beneficial behaviors.

When a species is sufficiently advanced to recognize individuals and to form social groups, they develop shared behaviors that strengthen the family and group, and defend against outsiders. Inter-group cooperation is another, higher and more difficult behavior, but is is performed daily. We know how to do that due to hundreds of millennia of practice.

So when Dr. Craig says "objective values do exist, and deep down we all know it" and "Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior--they're moral abominations", he's just confirming those millennia of beneficial personal and in-group behavior.

Dr. Craig goes on to claim that without a supernatural basis "any deeper meaning is illusory". He's trying to convince you that deeper meaning and purpose in your life are not possible without God. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you take responsibility for your own life, as most adults do, and assert authority over your own thoughts and actions, then you know how your words and actions in the world can have a positive effect on your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, your community, your society, and the world as a whole. Your loyalty, respect, compassion and love for your wife or husband, and for your children, is of utmost importance. You have fulfilled the greatest purpose the majority of us will ever have. You intuitively recognize this framework of purpose in other humans, and you treat them largely in the same ways that you treat your kin and kith. It is this way, regardless of what real or imagined concepts you hold internally. If your concept of the world includes God and you remain a good person, then there is no conflict - but belief in God and the actual existence of God are not related. Belief is not dependent on the existence of thing being believed.

The Resurrection of Jesus

Dr. Craig's fourth argument claims that the resurrection of Jesus is powerful evidence that God exists.

Unfortunately for people that make this claim, the only place that the resurrection story is told is in the New Testament. Nowhere else.

The Gospels claim that he was put in a tomb that was sealed with a stone, and that the tomb was then found empty. But no moment of resurrection is recorded - so the only link between the existence of an actual resurrection and what the gospels record is that Jesus predicted that he would be crucified and resurrected, and that subsequent to his burial, others claimed they had seen and interacted with him, and then claimed the miracle of his resurrection.

There are no reports outside the bible that any of this happened.

More disturbing to the believer is that Jesus appears in no contemporaneous reports. The Romans apparently didn't take notice, the people of Jerusalem apparently didn't take notice. The people supposedly touched by his ministry apparently didn't take notice. No one cared enough to write down their observations of what, according to the New Testament, was probably the most important occurrence in the history of the world.

There are vague references decades after the fact, but these come at a time - after the first Epistles and some of the Gospels had already been written - when belief in Jesus was already growing into the pervasive religion it is today, and believers started to become notable to historians. But it was apparently unknown prior to then - unknown to the civil authorities and historians that lived at the same time Jesus did.

The argument that the resurrection of Jesus is powerful evidence that God exists is based on hearsay, and would never be admissible in a court of law. It should not be admissible as an argument here.

The immediate experience of God

Dr. Craig's fifth argument - citing "The immediate experience of God" - is promptly abandoned by the Doctor himself when he says "This isn't really an argument for God's existence; rather it's the claim that you can know God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by immediately experiencing Him."

As I pointed out initially, we can never know anything with absolute certainty, but having evidence or sound rational arguments help you to be confident that your belief is justified. Here Dr. Craig dispenses with that and claims that your internal sensations are good enough.

I agree with Dr. Craig that this isn't really an argument, but I'll add one comment to drive the point home. People claimed that unicorns exist, but never produced any evidence, thus we conclude that unicorns are a myth. The same with giants, dragons and leviathan - all similarly appearing in the Bible, all now considered myths. As cold as it sounds, you can believe what you want to believe, but if you can't find an instance of it in the real world, that belief is simply not justified. How you feel tells you only about your mental and physical state, and how whatever you're contemplating affects you. The universe, on the other hand, is the way that it is, whether or not you believe it.

My case for naturalism

The alternative viewpoint to the idea that God is turning the dials and pulling the levers behind the curtain is that there are naturalistic explanations for the same features and phenomena that used to be explained by the existence of God. A cleaner way to demarcate the two world views is that there is, on the one hand, the belief that God exists, and that his existence can be invoked to explain anything the individual finds inexplicable; and on the other hand, the belief that there are no supernatural agents at work in the world, and the lack of explanations for phenomena that we don't understand is a temporary condition, but not a reason to panic.

The positive case I make tonight as an alternative to the supernaturalistic worldview is this second, naturalistic world view.

I've already given you a sneak preview earlier in this statement, but I'll tie it all up with a bow right here.

Naturalism explains things. Those things that are presently unexplained are just harder questions than the easier ones that have been answered over time. We know where thunder comes from. No need to invoke a storm god. We know why eclipses happen. No need to invoke a sun-devouring dragon. We know where earthquakes come from. No need to claim that Atlas shrugged. We know how stars form, how planets form, how the elements and molecules that are needed to create simple life formed.

Every time naturalistic methods are applied to understanding an unknown feature or phenomenon in the universe, the mystery is eventually solved. Never has a supernatural explanation done that and survived a thorough examination. Never has a supernatural explanation replaced a natural explanation.

That leaves us with lots to yet discover about our universe, but we have centuries of evidence that convince us that the naturalistic approach to understanding the world will be eventually successful wherever it is applied. Conversely, we have millennia of evidence that a supernaturalistic approach to understanding the world does not result in explanations that are either worthwhile or accurate.

The remaining big questions appear to be within our reach, although we must always admit that some things are not physically testable - the creation of the observable universe, for instance - unless we discover the mechanisms and means to create our own universes. The same holds true for the creation of life, and of consciousness. They are difficult, but not impossible.

Invoking the supernatural is just broadcasting to the world that we don't know something, we feel compelled to provide an explanation, we don't want to try to figure it out, and we don't care who knows.

As we know more and more, we need to invoke the supernatural less and less, so that the gaps between the way the world is, and the way we understand it, grow smaller every day.

That is the most powerful indication that the supernatural - and a claim for the existence of God - are ideas that are consistently ineffective in discovering the way reality works. The idea that God exists is not supported by any evidence that you can find on your own, has no supporting evidence found by the greatest minds this world has produced, and has no arguments that support its existence - here tonight - or anywhere, at any time.

Thank you!

About Writing About Text

A second, somewhat different, takeaway comes to me as a result of the months I spent reading and analysizing the Craig-Pigliucci debate. It has largely to do with analyzing text and writing.

First, the effort was probably 3 or more hours each weekend, from late May until now. That's a minimum of forty hours, maybe as much as eighty, all for what took about 90 minutes to occur in real life. So I assume that my first read-through of each debate segment took about the same duration that it took for the participant to deliver it. In a 20-12-8-5 debate format, which I assume this was, that's 45 minutes per participant.

After reading each segment completely, I returned and wrote comments on each paragraph, then made a third pass to address particular phrases or sentences of interest - plus looked up stuff on the inter tubes when it was necessary or interesting. As the debate proceeded, the participants attempted to rebut previous segments by the opponent, so I had to refer back frequently. Finally, I took my notes, drafted a blog post or several, and edited.

The editing part is where I struggled, because I lost sight of my stated mission, which was to understand how Dr. Craig wins debates. This requires less (but still some) focus on the truth, validity and soundness of the arguments, and (according to my stated mission) more focus on how Dr. Craig framed the debate, presented his arguments, attacked his opponent's arguments, and painted an overall picture that the audience could apprehend and ultimately accept or reject.

What I needed to do, from a writing standpoint, was to separate the concerns - debate effectiveness, argument truth, validity and soundness, other discourse techniques - into separate subsections in each post, so that their focus was unambiguous. I won't go back and correct that now, because I'm not delivering a thesis for work or school, it was purely for my own interest. It is, however, a lesson learned.

I achieved my goal - I now can discern how someone with poor and even vacuous arguments can make it sound like he's speaking indisputable facts. It looks like a handy skill for a purveyor of hogwash to have. Still, it's dishonest, and does the people of the world a huge disservice to perpetuate a world view like Dr. Craig's that includes imaginary entities and schemes that people are expected to revere and live by.

Debate Post-Mortem 1 - What have we learned?

I've been done with the Craig-Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist" for over a week now.

My initial goal was just to get a general sense of how Dr. Craig orchestrates his debate performance.

I wasn't originally out to rebut Dr. Craig's arguments for the existence of God - most of them are well-known, and have long been rebutted. What I did want to do was to really get a feel for the offensive and defensive tactics that an allegedly top-notch theist would take during an organized debate - and prepare myself for the same at an informal, street-level setting. What I was able to discern about his performance is obvious to most observers: He carries himself well, he appears serious, knowledgeable, and occasionally light-hearted; he speaks clearly and confidently, he's organized and economical with his arguments, he's well-rehearsed and sticks to his talking points, he is familiar with the opponent's objections and with the opponent's own positive case; he frames the debate effectively.

I also noticed that he does a lot of other shit, as well.

Prior to reading this debate transcript, I had watched his debates against Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Lawrence Krauss on YouTube. From those, I got the impression that he was masterful at controlling the flow of the debate and assertion-bombing the opponent in order to diffuse the opponent's effectiveness, and obscuring the weak arguments he (Craig) has to give. Several blog posts from Luke Muehlhauser at Common Sense Atheism* and Andrew at Evaluating Christianity* lead me to believe that the guy was an unstoppable debating machine. That may well be, but now I see why. Beyond having a solid debating style, he's really reprehensible in his tactics and rhetoric. It's hard to tell if he's being dishonest, but it comes off that way. You can't make all these factual and logical mistakes and not be accused of being incompetent, dishonest, or well-paid. Maybe all three.

The following sections provide a sampling of errors in reasoning that he employs. Note that all these examples are from his twenty minute opening statement alone. That's as far as I had to look. Note also that in some cases, the examples shown demonstrate more than one fallacy or misuse of words and ideas. It would be hard for you and I to cram so many errors into such a short talk, but Dr. Craig does it with "style".

He misleads the audience by asserting that the proposition being defended ("Does God Exist?") must be falsified by his opponent (this is also called shifting the burden of proof):

...we need to ask ourselves two questions with respect to this hypothesis [the hypothesis that God exists]: (1) What evidence is there that serves to verify this hypothesis? and (2) What evidence is there that serves to falsify this hypothesis?

This is wrong - the affirmative must present the positive case. Period. Craig uses this tactic of shifting the burden of proof to claim that the opponent has failed to make the case against the proposition - and we saw that he came back to this again and again.

He misleads the audience into thinking his arguments will follow the rules of logic (this is also called lying)

If our goal is to determine rationally whether or not this hypothesis is true, we must conduct our inquiry according to the basic rules of logic

Of course, we see just in this brief listing, how frequently his logic fails. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham. It's a travashammockery.

He makes use of bare assertions

...this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power which created the universe

This always cracks me up, because it's such hogwash. By the way, we could say that this phrase is also a false choice (the possible cause is not limited to Craig's preferred explanation)and possibly, an appeal to ignorance (I don't know what did it, therefore God). You can't get this kind of entertainment just anywhere!

He appeals to authority - often using authorities that are not qualified for the subject matter, or of unknown quality

For as Anthony Kenny of Oxford University urges, "A proponent of the big bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the . . . universe came from nothing and by nothing."

Anthony Kenny is a nobody to most of the world, so this is curious use of an authority. Dr. Craig chose a philosopher to provide a quote about what an atheist "must believe" if he believes the big bang theory. What research supports this? Of course, we're not treated to any! There's not a shred of evidence that an atheist "must believe" any specific thing, let alone something that somehow supports the point that Dr. Craig is attempting to make.

He uses circular arguments

His whole Argument from the Existence of Objective Moral Values is circular.

He cherry picks quotes and quotes out of context.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the great atheist of the last century who proclaimed the death of God, understood that the death of God meant the destruction of all meaning and value in life.

What Nietzsche said, in context, was

"I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength!"

He misrepresents the opponents position.

Atheists have tried for centuries to disprove the existence of God, but no one has ever been able to come up with a successful argument.

Technically, atheism is just a lack of belief in a theistic deity - so there's no inherent stance about hypotheticals such as God. And **technically**, Craig could be correct if he's just referring to two or more atheists - but he makes it sound as if it's **many** atheists trying to do the falsifying. I suspect using atheism as the foil here - as opposed to other forms of non-belief - is convenient in order to gin up the tribal "wagon-circling" that will help believers defend their cherished views against those who don't share them.

He misrepresents current scientific and mathematical thinking

...mathematicians recognize that the idea of an actually infinite number of things leads to self-contradictions

For a correction of Dr. Craig's erroneous thinking, see the Wikipedia page on infinity for an overview. I'm sure you've noticed that he makes an unsupported generalization - claiming "...mathematicians recognize..." as if the broad class of professionals identified as mathematicians say such a thing. Again, we are shared no data that supports this. It's fascinating, his ability to make two or more errors in one phrase!

He uses false choice

The fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe is due to either law, chance, or design

Here, we see Dr. Craig confine the choices, which he's not qualified to do, nor are his cited authorities. The initial conditions are the result of something that we're not near to discovering, so Dr. Craig has fabricated talking points that have no meaning to the scientific world.

Unwinding this one further, we see that it is WE that have adapted to the universe. So the false choice, in a sense, masks a more fundamental error in reasoning.

He uses appeals to ignorance

The answer is that the chances that the universe should be life-permitting are so infinitesimal as to be incomprehensible and incalculable

Actually, this also demonstrates a misunderstanding (or purposeful misuse) of probabilistic-like terms. If he takes into account the evidence that we do, in fact, exist, then prior probability is useless to his argument.

He uses appeals to emotion

For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality in their lives

In fact, his whole "Fifth Argument - The immediate experience of God" - is a non argument, which he acknowledges while delivering it.

All-in-all, he's really reprehensible.

I can't take away much positive to say about Dr. Craig as a person, nor his arguments for the existence of God, after poring over this debate rather closely.

Although I may have missed other errors of language, reasoning and what we often refer to as facts, I feel completely justified in dismissing Dr. Craig as a credible commenter on the spiritual, the supernatural or the natural world, such as they may be.

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*Sadly, both sites are not being actively updated, although you can still get to the links I provide below:

• Reviews of William Lane Craig's Debates at Common Sense Atheism
• Mapping the Kalam: Introduction the first of many posts
• How to Debate William Lane Craig at Common Sense Atheism
• Advice for Debating William Lane Craig at Evaluating Christianity
• Advice for Debating William Lane Craig - part 2
• Advice for Debating William Lane Craig - part 3
• Advice for Debating William Lane Craig - part 4
• Advice for Debating William Lane Craig - part 5

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More recently, Chris Hallquist has written a series of posts at The Uncredible Hallq that give WLC a good working-over:

• You can get to them all from this page
• Here's a Google Docs page that offers a chapter on Dr. Craig from Chris's upcoming book
  
• ...and here's a Google Docs page that offers a chapter on why there are no good arguments for God from that same upcoming book

...and Deacon Duncan at Evangelical Realism and Alethian WorldView did a lengthy review of Craig's book On Guard that is well worth reading! It's many installments, so be patient - start here and read through the end here.