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Premise 2
 Because of the nature of time, it cannot be said that time, or the universe, began to exist. The second premise of Craig’s kalam argument is, he feels, “the more controversial premise”: The universe began to exist.
Personally, I don’t view this as controversial. It is simply incorrect. My overarching objection to this entire section of the chapter can be summed up by saying: “There was never a point in time at which there was no time.” Because of that fact, the Universe cannot be said to have begun to exist. Nor can it be said of time. This is a point that Craig comes so close to making himself, but I’ll come to that shortly. Continue reading…
I’ve said before that I think arriving at an objective moral system is within our power, though we certainly haven’t come close to one yet. To arrive at such a system, we have to factor out whatever cultural biases we might have. Much of any moral system stems from the value intrinsic in life itself. In the first installment of my On Guard critique, I responded to William Lane Craig’s claim that without a god, life has no value:
Life as we have defined it includes 1) any ordered entity 2) which takes in energy and transforms it to do work, 3) such as growth, development, and healing, 4) in order to reproduce and 5) adapt and change in response to the environment and other stimuli. Life is reasonably rare throughout the universe (though not necessarily vanishingly so) and is the only vehicle for intelligence of which we are aware. For these two reasons, life is worth preserving. Therefore, actions which foster the growth of life in general should be considered moral. Acts that cause life to decline or to perish are immoral.
Clearly, that argument is incomplete. If our moral system is to be objective it must apply universally. If we encounter alien life, it should seem equally reasonable to them. If there is a conscious creator, it should be equally reasonable to that deity. If we should christen a SkyNet, it should find this moral system valid. Continue reading…
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m tackling On Guard in smaller chunks now. The reason for that is best illustrated by this segment from the first part of my critique of Craig:
The dilemma of modern man is thus truly terrible. That atheistic worldview is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life.
-p. 45
No, it’s not.
Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without meaning, value, or purpose.
-p. 45
Yes, we can.
If we try to live consistently within the atheistic worldview, we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy.
-p. 45
No, we won’t.
In instead we manage to live happily, it is only by giving lie our worldview.
-p. 45
No, it isn’t.
Each of his statements in this passage really requires more attention than I paid them. Don’t get me wrong. He has a total lack of understanding of the human condition and the quotes deserve swift dismissal, but simply leaving it at that the way I did does nothing to really counter his beliefs, beliefs which he is not alone in holding.
For starters, there is no unifying atheistic worldview. Being an atheist consists of only one thing: disbelieving the statement, “A god exists.” There are, quite literally, an infinite number of worldviews compatible with that position, just as there are an infinite number of worldviews compatible with believing in a god. This poses a problem for Craig, since a good portion of the worldviews that include belief in a deity also lead people to be profoundly unhappy. It is my belief that there is probably no worldview which guarantees a lifetime of happiness. It may, in truth, be a contradiction, since a lifetime of uninterrupted happiness would be exceedingly boring and probably not fulfilling in the least. Continue reading…
Craig’s third chapter of On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (my second installment) is mercifully short. A scant ten pages. And in that ten pages, as will become clear, Craig believes that he conclusively demonstrates that there is no way God does not exist. Seriously. Ten pages!
 Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, world-class mind who proved God's existence, or clinically retarded? Read on to find out! Why Does Anything at All Exist?
This is an excellent question. Why existence? There could have been void. No Universe. No consciousness, no light, no matter, no stars, nothing. I have one problem right off the bat: Why do we always assume that ‘nothing’ is the default state? Of course, if there were nothing, there would be no one to wonder “Why is there nothing rather than something?” But that is neither here no there. We do exist. In a Universe which exists (although I’m aware of some compelling math which suggests that the internal forces of the universe all cancel each other out so, from the outside, it may appear we do not exist, but that’s a discussion that’s way over my head). This Universe has a boundary; a furthest extent. Now, this fact implies (it does not demand) that something lays on the other side of that boundary. It remains to be seen whether we have the ability to even contemplate what that might be, let alone describe it, since our Universe’s laws of physics and logic are null and void beyond that boundary.
But Craig’s going to take this on anyway and manage to sew it all up in ten pages. He’s either brilliant or making some incredibly stupid arguments. Care to wager which? Continue reading…
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