Thanks for your question, but alas, my answer is “I don’t know.”

In your opinion, when is it okay to defer to the consensus of experts on important issues?

I write a lot about the KCA. If your question isn’t answered yet, it probably will be eventually, in that series.

Craig says there was nothing before the Big Bang. That nothing should have been infinite. If it was finite, it means there was “something”

Is my question not worth answering?

The most problemmatic IBE stuff in the KCA happens in defending premise 4.

One of your favourite lines of reasoning when talking about God is to outline all the ways in which Goddidit is one of the worst explanations to use to explain almost anything. I agree 100% with this.

I think this heuristic can be used to kill most arguments for the existence of God, such as the fine tuning argument, the argument from miracles, the Leibnizian cosmological argument, the argument from consciousness and so forth.

However in your series on Sense and Goodness Without God you use it to attack the Kalam cosmological argument. Even though I do think that the Kalam argument keeled over and crumpled the day that Einstein published his 1905 paper on Special Relativity, I don’t think saying that God is a poor explanation for the origin of the universe can be level as a strong criticism against it. It seems to me to be deductive logic all the way.

The only IBEs that Craig appears to make in the argument are that:

1. Actual infinites don’t exist in reality.
2. The Big Bang model is the best explanation of the cosmological evidence.
3. Time is tensed. Temporal becoming is an objective reality

How does attacking the explanatory merits of Goddidit kill the Kalam? I can’t see a hidden IBE to God anywhere in the argument. I was wondering if you could explain this to me. Have I misunderstood you?

Cheers,

:)

I surmise that that is a sarcastic response. Craig claims that we all intuitively agree with his first premise. Does my first premise pass the so-called “intuition” test? I hail from India. May be I am missing something!

Yes, the series is not done yet. :)

About what, now?

I did go through your series on the Kalam argument. But I still I do not understand the possible objections to my “premises” and conclusion. May be I am missing something!

I had an insight today that you might find useful: “Supernatural” refers to when people think that data and control systems (software) exist or are transmitted without physical media (hardware) which as far as we can see, never ever happens.

Looking forward to listening to all your old podcasts.

Recently, it has come to my attention that theists don’t take to kindly to naturalists. This is because we do not believe in ‘objective’ truth. They are concerned with the ontology of the situation.

Anyway, my question is how would you respond to a theist who is over-zealous about this sort of thing? I usually just agree that although there is nothing wrong with the act itself, that doesn’t imply that I believe there to be anything right about it. But I am curious in your response.

Thanks,
Anonymous

One of these days I’ll get around to posting the ‘opening statement’ I would give against Craig in a debate.

See my series on the Kalam argument.

My question is: wouldn’t it be wise for debaters to abandon all other arguments and go after Craig just on his cosmological argument? It’s really the only one that matters.

If that argument is false then the other arguments are naturally explained (other than the ontological argument—it would simply be dismissed . . . I can imagine the perfect bowel movement therefore it must exist right?).

I can understand why physicists don’t debate Craig, they’re much to busy actually finding out how the universe works to bother with him.

It just seems when he debates using the cosmological argument he relies on the big bang and saying that it was the beginning of time and throwing out some mind bending number that is supposed to represent the probability of humans existing. Throwing some heavy physics at him and dismissing his other arguments as frivolous if the cosmo argument is false would be a decent plan of attack. There are currently two cyclic models of the universe, the Steinhardt-Turok model and the Baum-Frampton, Craig Hogan’s holographic universe idea, there are dozens of things and all of them point to the huge gaps in knowledge that Craig tries to fill in with a god. It’d be interesting to see someone to attack him using time: what time is and what if time doesn’t exist (implications of the wheeler-dewitt equation and “Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity suggest not only that there is no single special present but also that all moments are equally real”—scientific american).

Having said that, I am much more on the side of suspending judgement when it comes to a conclusion about the existence or non-existence of non-physical minds. It sounds to me like intellectual arrogance to deny too quickly their existence. My goodness, I would say, how on earth can we, i.e. limited human beings with an academic hat on in the year 2010 draw such a big conclusion that there are just physical minds while there is an entire cultural and philosophical history that points in the direction of non-physical minds and while neuroscience has only started to discover something interesting. While I am very much in favour of some kind of physical relationship between mind and brain, at this moment in time given what neuroscience and evolutionary biology still need to explain (an awful lot!), given my own phenomenology, given the cultural and philosophical history of non-physical minds and given the fact that a good number of people seem to have ’spiritual experiences’ (whatever that may mean), I would like to be rather careful here. But I am sure you can give me a convincing decisive argument in favour of there being just physical minds;-) (well, as an analytic philosopher I should perhaps start off by asking what you mean by ‘mind’?). This term can perfectly have a referrent like ‘faculty of thought/reasoning/decision and even ‘emotions/conations’and/or whatever else that fits with a reductive mind/brain view, but thereby you may simply beg the question against what an advocate of non-physical minds is rationally or intuitively so convinced of. (something ’soul-ish’ or ‘ghost-ish/angel-ish’ or both or something else….)

Clau

What could be the possible objections to this stuff?

Whatever existed/exists has a cause/causes.
The universe began to exist.
The Universe has a case.

I deny that there are non-physical minds. That’s what I mean when I deny the supernatural.

May I ask a question for elucidation? What do you actually claim when you deny that there is such a thing as a ’supernatural world’? Steering the direction of an answer a bit: in what way (conceptually speaking) is your denial of theism related to the denial (or belief?) that there may be such a thing as a spiritual something (whatever the ’something’ may refer to; ‘world’ is possible not the best candidate..), a spiritual something that can exist without any appeal to God?

Best, Clau

Do you like Chipotle?