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.

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.

Repeating the arguments, again.

As I continue this rocket sled to oblivion, today's offering in the review of the 1995 debate on "Does God Exist" between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Pigliucci, held at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, is Dr. Craig's Second Rebuttal.

Dr. Craig:

Second Question

The absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. For example, we have no positive evidence of an early inflationary era in the history of the universe, and yet if you look at many cosmologists, they believe that such an inflationary era actually existed. The absence of evidence is not a proof that it did not exist. And over and over again in the arguments Dr. Pigliucci offered to falsify the God hypothesis, he came back to me by saying that I haven't carried the burden of proof. But his objections, he claims, falsify God. Now if that's true, he's got to carry his share of the burden of proof. All I have to do is show that these objections are inconclusive.

The phrase "The absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence" in this context is just silly. To those paying attention, Dr. Pigliucci doesn't say there's no evidence - he says that naturalism explains what used to be explained by God; that evil, morality and Christianity all have inherent problems when backed up with the God concept most of us assume is being claimed - creator of the universe, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omni benevolent, infinitely just, eternal, etc. Although Craig's target demographic will nod and think "right on!", Dr. Craig is just highlighting that there is an absence of evidence that should leave people with no reason to think anything supernatural is going on, ergo no God.

Regarding Dr. C's jab at the inflationary epoch, it's hard to tell whether it's worth rebutting. If it is valuable and if he has time, Dr. Pigliucci should point out that "inflationary epoch" is a proposition by some scientists to explain how the universe came to look like it does now. It is not a claim to fact in the same sense that Craig claims for God. The two claims differ in their ability to describe the world.

Looked at a different way, "inflationary epoch" is part of a model constructed to fit the observational evidence, and is indicated by other observational evidence and mathematical calculation. "God" is a model that is built on a lack of understanding, and fits no observational evidence. It can be used by the unscrupulous, however, to make money and exercise power - so it's got that going for it.

More Dr. Craig:

Argument from Imperfections

So, for example, take his argument from imperfection. I responded with three points: (1) He assumes a static theory of creation, but creationists accept microevolution. He didn't respond to that point. (2) I said that it assumes to know what God would do, which is presumptuous. And he says that's true, but we must have an answer. No, not at all; it's he who thinks you have to be able to presume what God would create if He existed to carry the objection. I'm the one here to say, "I don't know, and you don't know; therefore the objection is inconclusive." (3) I said perfection is a relative term. A watch which doesn't function perfectly is still designed. He didn't respond to that.

I then gave the argument from evolution and pointed out that apart from God it's just too improbable to think that natural selection and genetic mutations could have resulted in the sort of biological complexity that we see. He didn't deny the point; he just said that I didn't quote biologists. But notice, he didn't deny the calculations or the point. In fact, Barrow Tipler in that same book reported that there's a consensus among evolutionary biologists today that the life of comparable information-processing ability to homo sapiens is so improbable that it's unlikely to evolve anywhere else in the visible universe.{1} That's what they report as a consensus among biologists today.

The previous two paragraphs might appeal to someone steeped in the minutiae of debate technique, but aren't immediately enlightening to the average man on the street. Maybe that's why he does it. The net effect is to make it sound as if Pigliucci drools, Craig rules. A case in point: Craig attacks Pigliucci for not responding to Craig's rebuttal point #1 to Pigliucci's "argument from imperfection". Joe six-pack won't care. Joe six-pack probably won't even hear the words as much as he hears the tone of voice and gets a general impression that Pigliucci has no answer to Craig on some point that sounds important.

We have - by virtue of having the written transcripts of the debate and an extensive amount of time in which to consider the debaters arguments, rhetoric and debate tactics - the luxury of slowly and carefully considering what was said, so that we can absorb, assimilate and analyze the validity, truth, soundness and the persuasiveness of the overall presentation.

The big arguments have been laid out. The big objections have been offered. Now we're being subjected to second-order arguments, objections, and debate technicalities that do not clarify our understanding of the proposition being debated. If the big arguments and objections are not persuasive because of their clarity, truth content, and rational support, these more indirect nits are unlikely to be of value.

Still more Dr. Craig:

Other Objections

He dropped his regression argument, dropped his "Naturalism works" argument, dropped his Problem of Evil argument, dropped his Noah's Ark argument. So I hope that you've not seen any persuasive reasons tonight to think that the God hypothesis is false. Dr. Pigliucci has simply failed to falsify that hypothesis.

Debate insiders will be impressed by this. Layman will probably have a vague feeling that Craig has shown that Pigliucci is retreating like a whipped dog. It is up to Pigliucci to reverse this. So Dr. Craig get's to say "Dr. Pigliucci has simply failed to falsify that hypothesis" - which may have a persuasive effect. In fact, Dr. Pigliucci does not owe anyone falsification of a hypothesis since he is not making the affirmative proposition. It is the proposition's claimant that must present the test(s) that proves the hypothesis. This has never been done anywhere, let alone by Dr. Craig. Remember - the universe was created by a Twinkie, you can't disprove that.

Even more Dr. Craig:

First Question

Now what about my reasons for believing in the existence of God?

Normally I wouldn't comment on a single sentence in-line, but it's worth pointing out here that he says he's giving reasons for why he believes in God, not reasons that make a "powerful cumulative case for the existence of God" as he claimed he would do at the start of the debate. Is he expecting this to appear in court and he's establishing plausible deniability? ;p

Return of Dr. Craig:

First Argument

(1) The origin of the universe. Here he admits the premises that Whatever begins to exist has a cause, and that The universe began to exist. "But why," he says, "think that the cause is God?" I gave the arguments in my first speech. I showed that it deductively follows from a cause of space and time that the cause must be timeless and spaceless. Therefore it cannot be anything physical and material that transcends time and space. It must be changeless. And I argued that it must be personal because otherwise you cannot explain how a temporal effect can originate from an impersonal, timeless cause. And he didn't refute any of those arguments. So I think in the formulation of the argument that I gave I answered all of his objections.

. . . . . . y a w n . . . . . . yeah, isn't the Argument from First Cause fabulous? I particularly like 1) that a spaceless timeless thingamabob exists; 2) it's personal. There's just such a mountain of evidence that such things exist. We non-professionals would do well to familiarize ourselves with this Iron Chariots page on First Cause.

Son of the dawn of Dr. Craig:

Second Argument

(2) What about the complex order in the universe? I explained the theory of probability. I did show why his example of the people in the room is a flawed analogy. "But," he says, "Look, there's no basis for these calculations. We don't know that these things are really improbable." What he's really suggesting to you here is that somehow a life-permitting universe is necessary, that if we knew of some Theory of Everything, we would see that life necessarily exists. And that is an enormously implausible hypothesis. Paul Davies, the astrophysicist, says,

There is absolutely no evidence in favor of it. . . . Even if the laws of physics were unique, it doesn't follow that the physical universe itself is unique. . . . the laws of physics must be augmented by cosmic initial conditions. . . . There is nothing in present ideas about 'laws of initial conditions' remotely to suggest that their consistency with the laws of physics would imply uniqueness. Far from it.

. . . it seems, then, that the physical universe does not have to be the way it is: it could have been otherwise.{2}

And, in fact, as I said, when you alter those constants, those conditions, those laws, you find out that we are balancing on a knife's edge. The origin of the universe is like the Empire State Building's popping into existence out of nothing. That's what the atheistic hypothesis is like, if they believe this really just happened by chance. And I find the design hypothesis far more plausible.

Dr. Craig really likes to throw jargon out there to see if it sticks. He claims to have "explained the theory of probability". Ummm...no, not in this debate he didn't. We can confirm that by reviewing his opening statement and his first rebuttal. So this statement is false, and does not add to his case. Now, it may be that the uncritical folks will nod their heads and say "yes Dr. Craig, we believe what you say", but that is not the same as making a factual claim. So he might have been persuasive, but he was not telling the truth.

Dr. Craig also says "What he's [Pigliucci] really suggesting to you here is somehow a life-permitting universe is necessary" - I presume so that he can put words in Dr. Pigliucci's mouth and offer a canned response. The term "necessary" is also identifiably philosopher-speak. He ignores the fact that we can exist only where conditions permit, which points out how backward this argument is constructed. Depending on how Dr. P mentally ranks this in importance, this is worth a brief rejoinder.

The most mystifying bit of jumbo-jumbo is the word salad from Paul Davies. I think it's an argument against the necessary existence of life. Same rebuttal applies - regardless what the a priori probability is, arrived at using whatever variables you choose, the answer is irrelevant once the a posteriori conclusion (life exists) is observed. If that's not what he's blowing hot air about, then maybe the people in the front row were cold. I can't tell. It comes off sounding like an elaborately-constructed straw man argument. Dr. Craig still gets to make a claim (however irrelevant it may be) that comes from someone who (he makes it sound like) should know what they're talking about. It can add to the persuasiveness, if not to the truth value of his cumulative case.

If it sounds like I'm separating the "persuasiveness" aspect of the debate from the aspect that counts truth, sound and valid as it's focus, I am. As our friend jimfoster from The Uncredible Hallq comments pointed out, the idea is to persuade, truth is optional.

Bride of Dr. Craig:

Third Argument

(3) What about objective morality? Here Dr. Pigliucci is clearly in a deep existential dilemma: he affirms that morality is not objective--it is the invention of human beings--, but he cannot bring himself to say that therefore anything goes. He wants to cling to moral values. But, you see, for an atheist these values are floating in the air: they have no objective basis. On atheism moral values are just social conventions. You could have chosen to go on the red and stop on the green. They're just human inventions, the byproducts of socio-biological evolution. But that means that a society like Nazi Germany or South Africa, where apartheid was practiced, or what happened in Cambodia in the killing fields, that those aren't morally wrong, that is, they are morally indifferent. And I, at least, cannot bring myself to believe that. It seems to me far more plausible that there is objective right and wrong; for example, torturing babies for fun is wrong. And if you agree with me tonight that that is objectively morally wrong, then you would agree with me that therefore God exists. For he admits that if we have no God, these things are not objectively wrong, but they're human conventions.

This paragraph is fascinating. We can do an entire blog post on this one alone.

The argument from the existence of Object Moral Values is circular to begin with ... it introduced a premise that is as contentious as the existence of God, and that relies on the existence of the proposition being (supposedly) supported to warrant its own promotion from mere conjecture to fact-that-is-worthy-of-supporting-an-argument-for-God.

Having said that this argument is circular several times already, let's continue. Craig claims that Pigliucci has a moral dilemma ... a claim that he, Craig, alone fabricates. The dilemma that he fabricated is that, by denying that objective moral values exist, that Pigliucci must ... MUST say "... therefore anything goes". Dr. P is not constrained by any such thing. Dr. Craig's whole sub-case (can't really call it an argument any more) boils down to "Christians are moral, atheists are not, don't believe a word of biology, sociology or evolution". The dog whistle is strong with this one! He has never made a sound argument that objective moral values exist; even if he could, he then has to make the case that those objective moral values come from some source; even if he could do THAT he needs to make the case that God exists; even if he could do THAT he has to tie the existence of objective moral values to God. He hasn't done a bit of that at all.

Son of the bride of the dawn of Dr. Craig:

Fourth Argument

(4) What about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? Here he asks, "Why think that Jesus was special?" Very simply: because of the evidence for his resurrection! No other founder of any religion in history has had such a thing claimed of him. "But," he says, "Isn't it arbitrary to believe in a miracle in this case if you don't believe in miracles in many other cases?" Not at all! You should believe in a miracle, I think, when (1) No naturalistic explanation of the facts is available that plausibly explains the facts, and (2) There is a supernatural explanation suggested in the religio-historical context in which the event occurred. The resurrection of Jesus is significant not just because anyone or someone rose from the dead, but because Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the absolute revelation from God, rose from the dead. And what is significant is that Dr. Pigliucci hasn't been able to deny any of those three facts that the majority of New Testament critics hold to today: the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the disciples' faith. Those are the historical facts. Now you can pursue agnosticism if you want. You can just say "Well, I don't know the explanation." But I certainly think a Christian is within his rights to say, "You know, it looks to me like those men were telling the truth," that the best explanation is that Jesus did rise from the dead. So you can remain agnostic if you want to, but it seems to me that as a historian I'm certainly within my rational rights to say the best explanation is that Jesus rose from the dead.

This paragraph uncovers an exhortation to ignorance that is worth commenting on.

First, we're back to "Dr. Craig claims the resurrection happened". We don't have any evidence whatsoever that this happened, contrary to Dr. Craig's claim. The Bible claims it happened, but we know that the first person to comment on the event, and whose written record exists that we can refer to - Paul - did not claim to have known Jesus, and did not make claims to the physical facts of his life and death (i.e. no reference to the empty tomb). There is no doubt that Paul believed that Jesus was resurrected, but it was up to later authors, the folks that wrote and edited Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, to fill out the details. This does not bode well for the claim of resurrection, as it appears that the physical events are unknown to Paul at the time of his writing. Claims that historians wrote of Jesus ignore the fact that the historians apparently relied on the same sources, so knowing whether there was independent verification is impossible. All we can say with strong confidence is that the STORY was compelling and memorable.

The "exhortation to ignorance" is "You should believe in a miracle, I think, when (1) No naturalistic explanation of the facts is available that plausibly explains the facts, and (2) There is a supernatural explanation suggested in the religio-historical context in which the event occurred." If you don't know of an explanation, claim ghosts did it.

Finally, Dr. Craig concludes:

Fifth Reason

(5) Finally, the immediate experience of God has not even been discussed tonight in this debate. But I think one can know immediately that God exists as well.

I think Dr. P is being polite by not attacking Dr. CraIg's belief personally ... but "knowing" is not what we humans do. We feel certainty, we believe, we can be certain of events that leave a physical piece of evidence (a burn scar on a finger), but not much else. This is still the weakest argument for the existence of God, but the one that, I'm guessing, resonates most with the believer. I can understand not attacking it - it has almost infinitesimally low explanatory power, and it is probably not worth alienating people that believe in God primarily because of a similar personal experience.

Attacking Design arguments - again

Today I'll wing through Dr. Massimo Pigliucci's First Rebuttal as part of my on-going review of the 1995 debate on "Does God Exist" between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Pigliucci, held at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Dr. Pigliucci begins:

My response is going to be: "Show me one." Until you show me one, you cannot accuse me of being close-minded because I don't want to consider or acknowledge the existence of unicorns. I'll consider it; but before I'll acknowledge it, you have to come up with a positive argument.

I have no idea what Dr. P is referring to here ... I presume that this is a misplaced part of the transcription.

This next section is marked as addressing Dr. Craig's First Argument. As before, I presume it is labeled so by Dr. Craig or one of his associates to allow the reader to relate his opponent's words to Dr. Craig's original arguments.

First Argument

About this origin of the universe thing: Dr. Craig said that the universe has a cause, and it has a beginning. As far as I know, that is true (and I am qualifying this because astronomers and cosmologists do change their mind quite often, and things have changed in the last 20 or 30 years, so I wouldn't bet my life on these things). But let us assume that in fact the universe had a beginning and in fact the universe had to have a cause of some sort. Well, that does not imply by any means that that cause was what we refer commonly to as God. It only means that there was some kind of cause that we really don't know much about. It doesn't imply by any stretch of the imagination that that cause was conscious, that it had supernatural powers, that it has omnipresence, omniscience, and all the other "omnis" that you want. The two things simply don't follow. It only means that there is a cause, O.K.? Dr. Craig said that therefore that implies that there is a personal agent. And once again I'm asking, "Dr. Craig, where does this agent come from?" Why does he think it was personal as opposed to impersonal? After all, we might not be that far from each other because scientists do agree that there must have been a cause and that cause probably was impersonal. It's just a matter of defining what you mean by "cause."

Dr. Pigliucci is addressing Craig's Argument from First Cause, and I agree with the substance of his criticism. He accepts that the universe has a cause. He doesn't' accept that the cause is God. He doesn't think the omni-whatever characteristics that Craig asserts are necessary, and he doesn't see the "personal" nature of the cause as necessary. I agree with all of those things wholeheartedly.

What I have a problem with is the way that Dr. Pigliucci says them. Even through a printed transcript, devoid of visual or aural cues, Dr. P comes across as indirect and even unsure. Case in point: "About this origin of the universe thing" ... He comes across there as cavalier, maybe even flippant. I would give anything to see a video of this so that I could tell! Case 2: he spends several sentences saying "Dr. Craig and I both agree the universe had a beginning, which implies a cause". He spends several more sentences that could have been replaced with "Nothing Dr. Craig presented indicates that the cause was any conscious agent, let alone God" - he could elaborate on criticisms of Dr. C's preferred God from there.

Pet peeve: the phrase "It only means that there is a cause, O. K.?" is what makes him sound unsure to me. I wouldn't be fishing for approval. Omit the "O.K?" and we're good.

My comments so far don't address the effectiveness of Dr. Pigliucci in rebutting Dr. Craig's claims in the context of the agreed upon debate format. There are - and should have been all along - some common aspects of the debate we want to keep in mind. I've concentrated on "conversational" aspects: the style and organization, whether sentences or paragraphs make sense, how a layman like me detects strength or weakness in an argument, whether an obvious fallacy or lie was committed. I've been less concerned with technical debate aspects up until now, because I was more familiar with the arguments themselves at the outset of this venture. Now that I'm more familiar with Dr. Craig's tactics and the content of his arguments, I can see how the relative speaking and debate-specific skills come into play.

More Dr. P:

Second Argument

Let's go back to the complexity of the universe and the balance of the initial conditions. As I said before, it's really hard to estimate probabilities. These estimates that Dr. Craig referred to as the Anthropic Principle are really, really wild. If you ask a lot of physicists, as I have done, they'll tell you that those calculations really have no basis whatsoever. We simply don't know. We don't know enough. It's very easy to pull out of the hat any kind of number that shows that something is highly improbable. I don't know if you have noticed, but Dr. Craig keeps presenting these probabilistic arguments--for example, for the probability of the evolution of humans. And the people that he cites are either physicists or chemists, not biologists. Don't you find that peculiar? I mean, the problem there is this: I don't feel qualified as an evolutionary biologist to go into a physicist's lab and tell him how the atom works. That's not my job; that's the physicists' job. I find it peculiar, on the other hand, that physicists and chemists have no problem whatever getting into the field of biology, counting out their numbers out of their hats, and not furnishing any good reason for doing that. It is their prerogative, of course, to do that--inquiries are open to everybody--, but you have to have solid reasoning to do that.

I would have attacked the fine-tuning argument with something simple: "Dr. Craig throws out all these impressive-sounding statistics while ignoring the simple fact that we can live only where the conditions permit". I would attack the thinking, and ignore the numbers altogether. Taking a Douglass Adams / puddle tack would be light-hearted and effective, whereas going down the probabilities and statistics hole is not for your average man on the street.

Dr. Pigliucci:

By the way, I'd like to mention that you should never believe something just because somebody says it, no matter how important or famous that person is. Case in point: Dr. Craig has cited a couple of times Fred Hoyle. Fred Hoyle is a very well- respected and known British astronomer. He came up with quite a few bizarre ideas throughout his career. In fact, he came up with so many bizarre ideas in his career that the British Astronomical Association gave him, and only to him, a medal for the highest number of wrong theories proposed in a career. Notice that that is an important fact because Fred Hoyle, for example, was one of the people that opposed the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, and the British Astronomical Association gave Fred Hoyle this medal because we do have in fact a lot of people working on the Big Bang theory, and we have learned so much about the Big Bang theory in part because so many people were upset with Hoyle when he proposed his theory. So you know, wrong proposals do have very good and positive results sometimes. That doesn't mean you should believe them.

Here again, Dr. Pigliucci is correct. He gets points from me for going after Fred Hoyle, who is an easy target to attack. I would have used a few less words, but that's all. For extra credit, a general case can be made that many of Dr. Craig's authorities are less than trustworthy - either because the citations have been cherry picked / quoted out of context - or are by people speaking outside their area of expertise.

Back to the debate:

Third Argument

Let's go back to this thing of objective morality. I think that there's a little bit of twisting and turning around here with terms. Again, it's not a matter of "Is there out there an objective morality?" We know that there isn't. There are some components of your own morality that are not shared by other human beings. So either you are pretentious enough to think that your morality for whatever reason is the only correct one, or everybody else in the world is wrong.

I think that that is pretentious. Of course there are some universals that all human beings share. Just today, for example, I told my students in a biology class that there are some things that human beings and society would never approve because of the way human societies are built. One, of course, is homicide; another one, of course, is rape. However, what we call homicide or rape or, in fact, even infanticide is very, very common among different types of animals. Lions, for example, commit infanticide on a regular basis because they want to make sure that the little offspring that is being raised by the lioness is their own and not someone else's. Now, are these kinds of acts to be condoned? I don't even know what that means because the lion doesn't understand what morality is, that's for sure.

Morality is an invention of human beings. It's a very good invention. I'm not suggesting we should abandon morality. I'm not suggesting, more to the point, that we should abandon ethics. Ethics is a perfectly valid way of thinking about things. We can all agree as a society that there are things that are wrong and things that are good. We can act on them, and we can enforce those things, but there is no higher power or no higher reason to tell us that this is right or this is wrong. Unfortunately, we are on our own; that's my humble opinion. I would really like for somebody to come down from the sky and tell me what is right and what is wrong. My life would be much, much easier. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen.

Dr. P is correct again - but this could have been trimmed a bit. Overall, though, these three paragraphs get an A for correctness and a B- for style. Not bad.

Fourth Argument

How about these historical facts of Jesus that somehow Christianity explains? Well, there are a few things that I would like to bring out on that. That, obviously, is a little bit on the side of the scientific arguments. It is really difficult to do a science of history. In some cases you can do it, but certainly with a unique historical event it is difficult. That's one of the limitations of science. Science, by the way, has limitations. I hope that that will be clear from tonight' talk. I'm not advocating science as a substitute for an omnipowerful God. But there are a few things that we can surmise from what we know about the origin of mythologies and the origin of religion in general.

This opening paragraph to rebut the resurrection of Jesus is pretty meandering. It could have been simple and harsh, as in "there are no contemporaneous records of Jesus, nor of any of his apostles. Consequently, we cannot know whether Paul, Matthew, Mark and Luke were speaking of actual occurrences, or repeating campfire stories."

A demerit: I think he blows it here: "I'm not advocating science as a substitute for an omnipowerful God"

Continuing:

For one thing, according to Roman documents of the time, Jesus was just one among a lot of people that told people that they were prophets and were doing miracles. There were a bunch of them. He was just one of many. He probably was a particularly gifted one, and that's why his particular brand of religion eventually succeeded. But there were many; so why think that that particular one was special? Just because by historical accident it happened to be one of the most successful? So was Mohammed's, Islam is incredibly successful; in fact, it is the second most popular religion in the world. Well, are all the Muslims wrong and off track just because they happen to believe in the wrong prophet? On what basis can you make that judgment?

I think the criticism that there appeared to be a lot of "prophets" and "miracle workers" at the time is fair, but it's not persuasive to me as stated. I can see doing a few hours of research, listing instances and sources, and restating the above to include them.

Now what about these miracles? We can find a bunch of people that claimed to make miracles, that claimed to be prophets, throughout history, including today. I think you can get the address and send e-mail to people who claim to be prophets and miracle makers. Would you believe them? Well, I don't--not without seeing something really in person. Now, of course, people do claim to have seen miracles in person, but then again people also claim to have been abducted by aliens or to have seen fairies around, or gnomes, or whatever else you want. Now, by the way, even though I don't believe in UFOs and alien abductions, I think that those are much more credible than miracles. For one thing because a race of aliens coming in on Earth and interfering with our personal affairs--although you might ask, "Why would they want to do that, why would they want to travel out this way just to abduct a couple of people from the countryside of Iowa?"--this puzzlement aside, they don't violate any physical laws that I know. It may have taken them a long time to travel at subluminal speed without violating the theory of relativity to get to this planet, but they could have done it; there is no question about it. They are not violating any physical laws. Miracles do. Now there is nothing wrong with that either, and you can still believe in miracles. The problem is, you can't pick and chose; you can't think that naturalism in absence of miracles works most of the time and then when it is convenient for you a miracle happens. Because the most likely explanation for that is that something happened for which you simply don't have any other idea of what it was, and I think it's much more humble and less pretentious, if you want to use this term, to just say, "I don't know." There's nothing wrong with that. "I don't know" is much better than saying, "Well, I'm going to make up a whole story about what has happened, and this is the result of a higher being, of which I know nothing and I can know nothing."

That was drifty.

The simplest rejoinder is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" ...also... "that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence". Throwing some Hitchens at them would be fun!

Honestly, a discussion of miracles could take more time than it's worth. If I were to take Dr. P's paragraph here for my own, I'd trim it down to focus on how miracles must be validated, and how they can be reliably attributed to God or another supernatural agent, then state that such a project has never yielded a successful result.

Argument from Imperfections

Dr. Craig finally pointed out that it is pretensions of atheists, or non-theists, as I said I prefer to be called, to guess the mind of God. Of course, it is pretentious, but it's a trick. Here is the trick. I can say I'm not pretentious enough to know the mind of God, but I still need an explanation of why God is doing things one way or the other. To simply recoil into "Well, he did it because he felt like it" or "He knows better" again is no explanation. It is not satisfying from an intellectual point of view. It may very well be true. After all, probably mice in laboratories all over the world do wonder what the heck are we doing with them, making them go round and round in circles, and testing their intelligence. They probably do that, and they certainly don't have the brain to understand what's going on. At least that's what we think. But you have to ask the question, and if the answer is, "I don't know," then I'm afraid that the theistic position is in no better shape than it was when we started.

I get what he's saying - but it seems indirect. Dr. P gets drawn in to using the term God as if it's a real, active agent in the world. I wouldn't have done that. The assertion by Dr. Craig was that the appearance of design implied a designer, and Dr. P rebutted that the design has a lot of imperfections. It makes sense to point out that the lack of perfection implies any conjectural designer appears imperfect, but I think that the right thing to do would be to change focus from the the "imperfections" and re-focus on how the universe appears just as you would expect if there were no designer.

My thoughts on Dr. Pigliucci's First Rebuttal as a whole? I think what he says holds up in a non-debate setting. If the purpose of the debate is to persuade people to adopt your view over the opponents, I don't think Dr. P does that, in spite of the fact that what he says can be supported by most rational thinkers and scientists. Dr. Craig makes his case with authority and economically ... Dr. Pigliucci seems to drift somewhat. This is something that I, as a casual street-level debater, probably need to drive out of my theism debate thinking.

Dr. Craig concludes his First Rebuttal

I'm whizzing through Dr. William Lane Craig's first rebuttal in the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?". I happened to have a couple of unpublished posts backed up, so let's flush 'em out of our system!

Previous reviews of this same debate can be found starting here through Dr. Craig continues his first rebuttal

Dr. Craig:

First Question

Now what about my arguments to show that God does exist? Dr. Pigliucci uses a general argument against this to say that God is not explanatory. But notice he fails to understand the structure of my arguments. My arguments are deductive arguments, that is to say, if the premises are true, then by the laws of logic the conclusion follows inescapably. Whether you like the conclusion, whether you think it's explanatory, is irrelevant: as long as the premises are true, it follows by deductive logic that the conclusion is true.

Craig's rebuttal that Dr. P does not understand the structure of Dr. C's arguments is some technical mumbo-jumbo that only debate practitioners, logicians and philosophers will "get" easily. The rest of us will drool.

Via The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "A deductive argument is an argument in which it is thought that the premises provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion." This is as Craig says it is. What Craig is slipping by the unsuspecting audience is that his premisses are not necessarily true. In the next paragraph, Dr. Craig concludes that "A transcendent cause of the universe exists." . He keeps asserting that transcendent cause without an ounce of evidence or rational support. It would be correct to say that if premisses 1 & 2 are true, then "A cause of the universe exists", but he does not say this. I can even quibble over whether either premiss 1 or premiss 2 is true, but that would divert us too much from the structure and style of this debate. You may refer back to my discussion of Uncredible Hallq commenter MNbo's criticisms of my article on Craig's cosmological argument - or see the Wikipedia page on The Big Bang - the section Speculative Physics Beyond the Big Bang to see other ideas related to the Big Bang that make the idea of "a beginning" irrelevant.

More Dr. Craig:

First Argument

So what he is going to deny? In my first argument I argued: (1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Will he deny that? (2) The universe began to exist.According to Steven Hawking in his book The Nature of Space and Time (1996), "Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang."{2} Will he deny that, the paradigm held by most cosmologists today? If he will not deny either of those two premises, then he cannot deny the conclusion, that A transcendent cause of the universe exists.

He says, but where did God come from? Very easily I can answer this question. The argument proves that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. Therefore, there must be a first cause which never came into being. Whatever begins to exist has to have a cause; but a being which exists timelessly, spacelessly, and necessarily is uncaused. This is what the atheist has always said the universe is. But that is now untenable in light of the philosophical arguments I gave and the cosmological evidence for the beginning of the universe.

In other words, neither of my two premises of my first argument were refuted by Dr. Pigliucci, and therefore I think we have good grounds for thinking a transcendent Creator exists.

Notice that Craig cites Stephen Hawking saying "Almost everyone now believes ..." as a warrant for his assertion that the universe began at the Big Bang. At the risk of being really really really repetitive, the Big Bang Model holds that the universe was once in an incredibly small hot dense state - and nothing else. Hawking is saying "(people) believe", and Craig weaves the two together in (probably) his usual authoritative fashion. But Hawking saying "Almost everyone now believes ..." is not the same as "It is established that ...". And since the Big Bang does not posit a beginning in the literal sense, then Craig's argument is entirely empty.

Second Argument

My second argument was based on the complex order of the universe. And here he had three objections.

(1) You cannot look for a Creator from what we don't know. I am not arguing on the basis of what we don't know. What I'm suggesting is that we do know that the initial conditions of the universe cannot be explained by law because they are initial conditions. They cannot be explained by chance because it is just too fantastically improbable. And therefore being neither explicable by chance nor by law, design is the only alternative. What is his answer? I would like to know.

(2) He says, "Well, your argument doesn't work because there's only one universe." Let me explain the theory of probability behind this. Imagine a blue dot on a piece of a paper, and let that be our universe. Slightly alter some of these constants and quantities. That makes a new universe. If it's life-permitting, make another blue dot. If it's life- prohibiting, make a red dot. Then do it again, and then again, and again, and again. What you wind up with is a sea of red with only a few pinpoints of blue here and there. That's what I mean when I say that life-permitting universes are incalculably improbable.

(3) He says, "But the probability of all these people being here tonight, these specific people, is highly improbable, and yet we are here!" That's a failure to understand the argument. Any universe you pick is equally probable, yes, but it is highly, highly improbable that the universe you pick will be life-permitting. That's the point. It's like a lottery in which there's a billion, billion, billion black marbles and one white marble. Any marble you pick is equally improbable, but the probability that the marble you do pick will be black is vastly more probable than that it will be white. Similarly, given the improbability of the initial conditions of the universe, the universe ought to be dead; there shouldn't be any life in the universe. The fact that it cannot be explained on the basis of chance or law leaves us with design as the best explanation for why the universe is finely tuned for our existence.

In point (1), Dr. Craig says that the parameters of the universe are too fantastically improbable to believe they are that way by chance. This is 1) a bare assertion, an argument from ignorance, a false choice, and privileging the hypothesis.

In point (2), Dr. Craig constructs a vague probability argument, while ignoring the overwhelming fact that we are here. The a priori probability is now irrelevant because it is now a fact (probability 1) that we are here.

In point (3), he doubles down on the probability chip, continuing to ignore that we are in fact here.

Third Argument

What about objective moral values? He agrees there are no objective moral values, but he says values are things that work or society will collapse. That is not at all true. Look at Nazi Germany. In his book,Morality after Auschwitz, Peter Haas asks how an entire society who have existed in which the mass extermination of Jews and Gypsies went on for a decade with hardly a protest being offered. He says the reason is because a new ethic was in place in Germany which did not define the holocaust as evil, but as good. And he points out that that ethic cannot be criticized from within because it was internally consistent. It can only be criticized if you have a transcendent vantage point and anchor for moral values. On Dr. Pigliucci's view rape, child abuse, torture, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, the killing fields of Cambodia are all morally indifferent because there is no objective right and wrong. And I submit that is simply untenable. Objective moral values do exist, from which it follows logically that God exists.

I hoped to get my other arguments on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in the rebuttal; but I'm out of time, so I shall quit.

Dr. Craig takes one of his weaker arguments and bolsters it with appeals to emotion. Yes, we all abhor "rape, child abuse, torture, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, the killing fields of Cambodia". What we object to is the warrant that this sense of abhorrence signals Objective Morals, and that this somehow is proof of God. Dr. Craig didn't make his case in his opening statement, and continues to not make the case here.

All in all, this is becoming tiresome. I started out as a grudging admirer of his, and am now convinced that he's an unscrupulous douche hydrant.

Dr. Craig continues his first rebuttal

Continuing Dr. William Lane Craig's first rebuttal in the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?".

Previous reviews of this same debate can be found starting here through Dr. Craig's first rebuttal

Dr. Craig:

The Regression Argument

(2) What about the regression argument, that the more we know the less we think God intervenes in the universe? Well, notice that that argument doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. It doesn't even prove that God doesn't often intervene in the universe. All that follows from that argument is the sociological factor that we don't think God often intervenes in the universe. And that conclusion is perfectly compatible with the idea that God often in fact does intervene in the universe. But, moreover, even if it were true that God doesn't often intervene in the universe in miraculous ways, that's not incompatible with Christianity. After all, miracles by their nature are relatively rare, and I don't think that God does frequently go around intervening in the universe in miraculous ways. So the argument is simply inconclusive.

Dr. Craig serves up a world-class vacuity: "notice that that argument doesn't prove that God doesn't exist". Ummm ... haven't we established a number of times that the burden of proof is on the claimant, and Dr. Craig - taking the affirmative position on the question "Does God Exist" - has that burden? And aren't we still waiting to hear rational argument that the affirmative position is superior to the negative one? And shouldn't we expect that the negative position won't waste any time on trying to prove a negative? The answers are yes, yes, yes and yes. Dr. Craig is not living up to his responsibility in the debate so far.

Pragmatic Argument for Naturalism

(3) What about the argument that naturalism works? Not at all! What works are scientific hypotheses. But those do not test naturalism because on the hypothesis that there is a Creator God who has designed the universe to operate according to certain natural laws, that could also work. So the fact that scientific theories work is in no sense a proof of naturalism.

What would you call this - a "Me Too" argument? Dr. Craig makes it sound as if naturalism is unproven, except if it is, couldn't it also be that God made it that way, thus proving the existence of God.

If Dr. Craig were interested in proving the existence of God, he would come up with at least one hypothesis that can be tested and whose only explanation would be the existence of God. Throughout human history, such a thing has never been done. It ***could*** be done, but isn't. The universe of possible answers to the question "why hasn't an attempt to prove the existence of God been made" ever been performed has many possible alternatives, including "it can't be done", "there's too much money to be made" and "we need to keep the unwashed masses guessing so that we can retain power". Other answers are possible as well, but these come to mind at the drop of a hat.

By the way, I don't know what tactic Dr. Craig is pursuing in his Me Too argument, but it speaks to believers because they already assume that God is behind it all. Never mind that the point of the debate is "Does God Exist?", and that using God as a term in a premiss is circular, thus invalid. Oh well.

Problem of Evil

(4) He says, "What about the problem of evil?" Well, let me make two responses here.
First, no atheist has ever been able to show a logical inconsistency between the propositions "God exists" and "Evil exists." They tried, but no one has ever been able to show that those two are contradictory. In fact, you can actually show that they are consistent by adding a third proposition, namely, "God has morally sufficient reasons to permit evil." As long as that third proposition is even possibly true, it shows that God's existence and evil's existence are logically compatible. The atheist seems to assume that if God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil, we have to be privy to them. But there's absolutely no reason to think that that is true.
In fact, secondly, evil is actually proof that God exists. My argument would go like this:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. (Dr. Pigliucci agrees.)
2. Evil exists.
3. Therefore, objective values exist. (Some things are really evil.)
4. Therefore, God exists.
And thus evil only calls into question God's existence on a superficial level. On a deeper philosophical level evil actually demonstrates the existence of God because evil as such could not exist without God.

Dr. Craigs first "refutation" of the argument from evil puts him in the position of arguing for a God that permits evil. This is strange, since Christianity makes a big deal about God's goodness. Maybe God can't do anything about it. Maybe he doesn't want to. Maybe he's evil. Maybe he doesn't exist. The possibilities are endless. If God exists and evil exists, why worship the fucker?

Notwithstanding my bad attitude about religion, arguing that the coexistence of God and Evil is not inconsistent is no argument for a Christian God. The negative position should press this, as all we get out of this particular argument is a God that humans would be distrustful of.

Noah's Ark

(5) The fifth argument he raised was the problem of Noah's Ark. I would simply just dismiss this by saying: First, it doesn't disprove the existence of God. Secondly, I would take Noah's flood to be a local flood, not a universal flood, in any case.
So all of these arguments, I think, are either invalid or based on false premises and hardly present any good reason to think that atheism is true.

Noah's Ark is a physical impossibility, and Dr. Craig knows it - he squirms his way out of the discussion without providing a rejoinder. A strong point for the non-theist position.

These rebuttals reviewed today are pretty shallow. Both the Problem of Evil and the Noah's Ark interlude raise the question of Bible inerrancy. Obviously Noah's Ark is easy to attack, but so are Yahweh's incompetence, petulance and immoral behavior. Add to that the inconsistencies that abound, and a Christian God becomes an obvious implausibility.

Dr. Pigliucci concludes his Opening Statement

I've finally made it through Dr. Massimo Pigliucci's opening statement from the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?" - I have a look at Dr. P's cases against Theism and for Naturalism. These are brief, and are coherent. So far, Dr. P's content has been good. I'll summarize positives and negatives for both participants' efforts after Dr. P finishes up.

Previous reviews can be found starting here through Dr. Pigliucci's Positive case for Naturalism.

Dr. Pigliucci begins his final arguments:

Problem of Evil

There also are some serious philosophical problems with the theistic position that I really have a hard time thinking how Dr. Craig can solve them. The main problem that I see is the problem of evil. The philosopher Bertrand Russell put it very nicely, and I can hardly do better than he did , so I'm going to read pretty much verbatim his quote. "If I had ten billion years and this is all I could come up with, the universe as it is, I should be ashamed of myself." Everybody in this room can think of a much better universe with no earthquakes for one thing and no snow storms, no murders, no rapists, and so on and so forth. It's very easy to come up with one. So if this God is supposed to be all powerful and all good, why do we have this mess down here? And please don't answer that question with "The devil did it!" because the devil also was a creation of God, and so it's still his fault anyway. And I really don't see a way out of that one, unless you want to argue that creation has unintended consequences, there are things that happen in the world that God really didn't want; but then we're pulling back into the category of the personal, failing God that nobody here probably believes in.

Generally, the Problem of Evil provides current and on-the-fence non-believers sufficient warrant to conclude a "good" God does not exist ... Dr. Pigliucci is smart to include it. His discussion of this is conversational, whereas other formulations are presented as syllogisms. I find these to be more direct and effective. Dr. P did not give this kind of detail, maybe with good reason. We'll have to see how Dr. Craig counters.

Dr. Pigliucci on Problems with Christianity:

Problems with Christianity

There's also some specific problems about Christianity. What I've said up to this point really applies to any positive definition of God. As I said, I'm not here to deny the existence of every single possible God. There are some Gods that are simply beyond any kind of speculative or scientific argument. But, for one thing, can you give me a good reason to believe in the Christian God in particular, as opposed to many other ones of the Gods that have been proposed so far? You've got ample choice there: you can believe in Zeus, you can believe in Baal, you can believe in Zoroaster--there's plenty of them! Well, why one over the other? I really can't see any particular reason for it.

Also Christianity makes some specific statements about the world and about humans. If you believe, for example, literally in the Bible (which I'm guessing Dr. Craig does not), if you really believe in the Bible, of course, you get in a bunch of problems. Science can answer that there wasn't such a thing as Noah's flood and certainly not as a world-wide event. Other things are: well, the sun never stopped anywhere in the sky because the sun doesn't move at all. It's the Earth that rotates around the sun, and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of specific statements in the Bible that simply cannot be taken literally. But even if you don't take it literally and you get some kind of general meaning, well, generally speaking, man is supposed to have fallen from somewhere, from grace supposedly. Well, evolutionary biology tells us that in fact man evolved in a positive way and is one of the most complex creatures in the world today. It's the end product of a very long process of evolution, I really see those two things in direct contradiction.

Finally, as far as Christianity in particular is concerned, there's plenty of archaeological, anthropological, and sociological evidence that Christianity is just one of several mythologies that evolved and changed throughout human history. It is a part of human culture; it can clearly be traced back to Hebrew traditions, to Babylonian traditions in Mesopotamia. A lot of the myths of Christianity are borrowed all over the place, as are other myths that we see today as to religions. Religions rise, they fall, they change, depending on their culture and social background of the populations that adopt them, and eventually they die, and then something will come up and replace them. That is the historical sequence that has happened over and over again, and I can really hardly see how anybody would look at that sequence and say, "Well, this particular sequence over here is an exception. This is not just not like another religion. It's different." Well, why, on what grounds?

Up through now, this appears to be Dr. Pigliucci's best, most concise argument. There is no reason to believe that the technical arguments for the existence of God (First Cause, Design, and others that Dr. Craig did not mention) will conclude with the Christian God. As Chris Hallquist points out, these arguments don't even guarantee a single god, or gods at all.

Dr. Pigliucci concludes:

The Problem of Morality

Finally, the problem of morality, which I'm sure we'll have more to say about--oh yeah, I agree with Dr. Craig when he cited Dr. Ruse, a philosopher of science. There is no such a thing as objective morality. We got that straightened out. Morality in human cultures has evolved and is still evolving, and what is moral for you might not be moral for the guy next door and certainly is not moral for the guy across the ocean, the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, and so on. And what makes you think that your personal morality is the one and everybody else is wrong? Now a better way of putting this is that it is not the same as to say that anything goes; it is not at all the same. What goes is anything that works; there are things that work. Morality has to work. For example, one of the very good reasons we don't go around killing each other is because otherwise the entire society as we know it would collapse and we'd become a bunch of simple isolated animals. There are animals like those.

Thank you!

Here Dr. Pigliucci has the same reaction that I did to Dr. Craig's claim that (paraphrasing) "if objective moral values don't exist, then God doesn't exist". We agree.

I think that Dr. Pigliucci closes strongly - his "Problems with Christianity" and "Problem of Morality" being two of his clearer, more concise arguments. Do I think he makes the stronger overall positive case than Dr. Craig? I really can't say - particularly when I can't see an actual video of the contest. Just for fun, let me re-sequence the arguments that Dr. P used - without adding or removing a section, except to add a brief recap of the positive case at the end:

Dr. Pigliucci made his opening statement in this order:

1. (his intro)
   
2. Clarification of the Term "God"
   
3. Argument from Design
   
4. God and Nature
   
5. Argument from Fine-Tuning
   
6. Problems with Theism
   
7. The Case for Naturalism
   
8. Problem of Evil
   
9. Problems with Christianity
   
10. The Problem of Morality

Given the same material, I can see re-organizing this to fit my proposed intro-positive case-initial rebuttal-recap format thus:

1. (his intro)
   
2. Clarification of the Term "God"
   
3. The Case for Naturalism
   
4. God and Nature
   
5. Problem of Evil
   
6. Problems with Christianity
   
7. The Problem of Morality
   
8. Argument from Design
   
9. Argument from Fine-Tuning
   
10. Problems with Theism
    
11. (a recap of the positive case)

This is a pretty minor reshuffling ... with the exception of his section "God and Nature" - it appears that all Dr. Pigliucci did was offer initial rebuttals to Dr. Craig's Arguments first, then finish with the "positive construction for non-belief". It's kind of a toss-up.

Next time we start on initial rebuttals.

Dr. Pigliucci make a positive case for Naturalism

Continuing my review of Dr. Massimo Pigliucci's opening statement from the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?" - I have a look at Dr. P's cases against Theism and for Naturalism. These are brief, and are coherent. So far, Dr. P's content has been good. I'll summarize positives and negatives for both participants' efforts after Dr. P finishes up.

Previous reviews can be found starting here through Dr. P's argument against Nature & God, and Fine-Tuning.

Dr. Pigliucci resumes:

Problems with Theism

In general what we are discussing here tonight is the difference between theism and naturalism, and I think the theist has a lot of problems which need to be addressed. One of these problems is that theism makes an unfounded and difficult-to-defend assumption: it assumes that something else exists beyond matter and energy. That might be a reasonable assumption to some people in the audience, in fact I'm sure, to most people in the audience, but think about it. You know that matter and energy exist. You don't know that something else exists beyond that, and therefore the burden of proof is not on me to demonstrate that that something does not exist; it's on Dr. Craig to demonstrate that something else exists, because we all know the matter and energy are here. If you need something else, then we need some evidence for that.

Also, answering whatever question about the origin of the universe, the origin of life, or anything else, "God did it" really is not an answer. It doesn't provide any answer whatsoever; it doesn't have any explanatory power whatsoever. Well, how did God do it, how did it work , why does it work one way and not another? Science is about not just giving an answer. I'm not going tell you that humans evolve, period. I'm going to tell you how, in what times, and what sequence of events actually is involved. There's much more detailed explanation; in fact, it is an explanation. It may not be a perfect explanation, but it is an explanation.

Another problem is what I call the infinite regression problem. Let's even assume that we do need a God or some kind of supernatural entity in order to explain the universe; well, then, the obvious following question is: where does God come from? I never could get an answer to that. And if the answer is that he was always there, that is exactly the same as saying that matter and energy were always there. There is no difference there.

Furthermore, we have already talked about the problem of negative evidence. There is a tendency on the theistic side to pick up on anything that science cannot resolve or cannot explain, at the least at the moment, as a positive evidence for the alternative explanation. That is not the way things work in rational thinking and logical thinking. You have to have your own arguments, positive arguments, to come out with an explanation. You can't just pick on anything that the other party is unable to explain, especially since part on the process of the other side is exactly to come up with explanations one at a time, and some of these explanations might fall because they're not good.

Dr. Pigliucci starts this segment by declaring that the theist position "has a lot of problems", which is true. Again, focusing on the way it's delivered, even on paper, this delivery sounds tentative. Now, it may have had the best effect that he could have hoped for given the circumstances, but it still bugs me. The first paragraph in this section states the case well, but just seems too conciliatory.

Dr. P digresses into an examination of the first cause argument again, then infinite regression, then negative evidence. I have no problem with the individual thoughts he's expressing, just the way they're ordered and delivered.

Dr. Pigliucci on Naturalism:

The Case for Naturalism

Furthermore, I'd like to go on to say that there are very good reasons to trust naturalism. That is the positive side of my argument. First, naturalism has predictive power. There are a lot of things that work. For example, you can switch on the lights, and the lights do come on. The reason for that is because electrons move around and exchange energy. All these things physics has explained very well, so it does work. Can you come up with a similar example of predictive power on the other side? I don't think so.

Furthermore, it works in practice. The reason you guys were able to get a car, for example, to get up here tonight is because technology works. And technology is based on naturalism. If the assumptions of naturalism were not consistent, you wouldn't have a car, you wouldn't have a TV, you wouldn't have a VCR, and all these other amenities of life. Now you might argue that we might be better off without that, but that's a different question.

Dr. Pigliucci waits until these two paragraphs to make a positive case for naturalism. Again, I agree with what he says, but...

Here's a brief re-imagining of the six paragraphs we just read: 

"Naturalism relies wholly on things we can examine to describe the world we live in. Space. Time. Matter. Energy. Exactly those things that we can observe, and nothing else. From those real things, we can describe physics, chemistry, biology, all of the sciences, and predict how things behave under certain well-defined conditions. That ability has everyday benefits - it gives us lightbulbs, and delivers electricity to light them up. It allows us to create automobiles and to fuel them with gasoline so they transport you from point A to point B. You are a naturalist. You depend on these things (and many others ure   P that were discovered and refined using naturalist approaches)to live your life. Theism, on the other hand, relies on proposing something not seen to achieve effects that are never observed in the world. No one ever sees a god interacting with people - not in the history of mankind. No one ever sees a god healing an amputee. No one ever sees a god performing a feat in the world that isn't better explained by natural cause and effect. Never. Heaven? Hell? Don't see 'em. God? The Devil? Don't see 'em. Ever. Should we wait all of our lives for these things to magically appear In order to validate our hope or belief that they exist? I can't think of a single good reason to do that - to let your life pass you by completely while you anticipate some event that never happens. To anyone. Ever. The case for naturalism is confirmed every day. The case for theism is never confirmed on any day. Ever."

Then there's Sean Carroll's excellent case for naturalism , which I would prefer over anything I can cough up in isolation. View the YouTube video here.

Next time, we'll wrap up Dr. Pigliucci's opening remarks.

Dr. Pigliucci against Fine Tuning

Today, Dr. Massimo Pigliucci continues his opening statement with two topics that are related to his prior "Argument from Design" segment - "God and Nature" & "Argument from Fine-Tuning". This is from the 1995 Dr. William Lane Craig - Dr. Massimo Pigliucci debate on "Does God Exist?" I've previously discussed other portions of the opening statements starting here through Dr. P's argument against the Argument from Design.

Dr. Pigliucci resumes:

God and Nature

Furthermore, it seems to me that the more we know about the mechanisms of the world, that is, the more we understand the world, the more the realm of God is being pushed back. The reason for that is, if you think about it, that in ancient times people used to evoke God as an explanation for almost everything. There was a thunder or lightning striking--well, that was Zeus that got upset with someone. That's because they didn't know where lightning was coming from. Now we know better, and we don't fault God for that kind of thing. We can now seclude him and confine him to only those things that we don't understand, the big questions that we are still answering in science, like the origin of the universe or the origin of life. But otherwise we understand better and better how things are going. After all, science has been around only a couple of hundred years. Give us some time! The more we understand, the less room there seems to be for God to exist. Now if you extrapolate just a little bit, you'll see that you have no reason for God.

In fact, this argument was presented more than a century ago by the astronomer Laplace, who was the first to present a complete theory for the origin and evolution of the solar system, a theory, by the way, that it is still considered pretty much correct. He presented his theory to the National Academy of France, and Napoleon was there. At the end of his presentation, Napoleon asked Laplace, "Monsieur Laplace, what about God?" And Laplace looked at Napoleon, and he said, "I don't need that hypothesis anymore." And there lies the key. God is a hypothesis that we formulate, that we could come up with, when we don't understand what is really going on.

Dr. Pigliucci points out the God of the Gaps strategy being implicitly employed by Dr. Craig. I can imagine a more economical and well-sequenced presentation of this, which I'll suggest at the end of the post. As I read through this, I can see how my own (irrelevant-but-good-exercise) "Opening Statement" might unfold. I can also see that I'd have to do a little research on whether to stick strictly to my own positive construction, or to present it and a preliminary rebuttal in the opening statement, which raises the question of what order these should be presented for the best effect.

Here, Dr. P addresses the more specific Fine-tuning Argument:

Argument from Fine-Tuning

Now the current frontier of the design argument is, as Dr. Craig mentioned, the idea that the physical universe is highly improbable. The current physical universe, the one that supports life as we know it, is highly improbable. I will get into the specifics of Dr. Craig's argument probably during the my rebuttal because I want to make a few other points; but some of the main points that come to mind in responding to that kind of argument is: first of all, the fact that we don't know how something works, like we don't know how physical constants originated, is by no means a positive evidence for the existence of God. There is a non sequitur here; there is a leap in logic. The fact that we acknowledge that there are some things we don't understand does not imply at all that there was a creator. It just means that we don't know, and that's the position that any honest scientist should actually maintain.

Furthermore, how likely is the universe? Well, we don't know because this is the only universe that we have. We can speculate, it's very hard to come up with numbers--actually, it's very easy to come up with numbers, but it's hard to come up with reasonable numbers. We don't have experiments; we can't experiment with different kinds of universes that easily. So, for example, I made some calculations: I'm assuming that there are a little more than a thousand people here tonight, and I made some calculation on what was the probability that each one of these persons was going to be here tonight. Since there are about five billion people on Earth at this point, the probability is 1 in 10 raised to 1000 raised to 5 billion. That's a humongous number! So by that reasoning either somebody really conspired from the origin of our lives to get us here tonight or this event is so improbable that, I'm sorry, you have the illusion that we're here, but we're not. You see where I'm going with this.

Dr. P resumes attacking the God of the Gaps analogy, and points out the false dilemma inherent in assuming when we don't know something, the only answer is that Goddidit.

I'll admit right here that today's post and the prior one addressing the Argument from Design should have been combined. The section headings in the debate transcript were misleading, even though I'd read Dr. P's opening statement in its entirety prior to breaking it down here. Given that, let me remark that, as a hypothetical audience member, I would appreciate the following outline:

• A positive construction for Dr. Pigliucci's case
  
• A description of the fallacies and rhetorical tricks used by the opponent in his opener (bare assertion, false dilemma, cherry picking, conflation)
  
• the beginnings of a point-by-point rebuttal of the opponent's positive construction
  
• Close the segment with a recap of the positive case

A from-the-ground-up positive construction, followed by a from-the-ground-up deconstruction of the opponent's style and substance would make it coherent and potentially compelling for me.

It should be noted that a 20 minute opening statement - as is usually allowed in Dr. Craig's debates - gives a speaker 1200 seconds to say his piece. Dr. Pigliucci's opener is about 3600 words, so that's a pretty good clip. Dr. Craig spent 2600 words or so on his opener. That's a good target to use. It will be interesting - and probably humbling - to see what I can come up with in a few weeks.