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 Topic: God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue

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  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     OP - March 07, 2014, 04:30 AM
    Hey, wanna see William Lane Craig get schooled by a real physicist?

    God & Cosmology
    Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue + Q&A
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07QUPuZg05I

    This is a beautiful kill. Carroll effortlessly dances around Craig and slices him to bloody shreds. Craig's creaky, makeshift, outmoded, amateur cosmic model is like a drugged and lumbering bull to Carroll's matador flair and expertise.

    After a long run down of all the flaws of the universe, Carroll says something that really resonated with me... "It's not hard to come up with ipso facto justifications for why God would have done it that way. Why is it not hard? Because theism is not well defined." Am I alone in thinking that's a brilliant line? It says it all to me.

    Theism is so vague, so non-specific that the theist has so much wiggle room to manoeuvre in and never has to commit to specificity. The theist can just keep rapid-firing justifications indefinitely no matter how many objections you raise. The theist can just keep making rationalisations up on the spot. Theism is not an actual cosmological model with predictive utility and explanatory power. It is a blob of Godstuff you can shape into guesses. It's intellectual play-doh. A pliable, shapeable non-explanation that can conveniently be any shape, property or function that the theist needs at any given time, and yet, since it is made out of only empty non-explanation stuff, we still have no actual explanation.

    I think people should really give the whole debate a watch. If you already know Craig's routine arguments, it's not entirely necessary to watch his parts because he doesn't bring anything noticeably new (except what I think might be a new concession on his part, in that he is no longer arguing the cosmological argument for the existence of god, but instead the cosmological argument for the existence of premises that have theological significance). I think people with even a casual interest in physics and cosmology will find Carroll's explanations assessable and very interesting. People with sharper knowledge might still find it enjoyable to hear the points articulated so well. It's good stuff.
    Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #1 - March 07, 2014, 06:42 AM
    I think this is the first time I really saw WLC get crushed
    "I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
    -Thomas Paine
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #2 - March 07, 2014, 04:26 PM
    WLC got schooled
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #3 - March 07, 2014, 04:41 PM
     thnkyu

    Not even halfway in yet, and this is beautiful.
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #4 - March 07, 2014, 05:51 PM
    Inorite? Craig seemed to be a foot shorter, a shade grayer, speaking a pitch higher towards the end.

    Shelly Kagan (one of my fave thinkers) handled him well on morality, too.

    Is God Necessary for Morality?
    William Lane Craig and Shelly Kagan Discuss
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm2wShHJ2iA

    Highlight:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebnShlP3jM
    Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #5 - March 07, 2014, 09:14 PM
    Nice. I'd have preferred it if Carroll used his last time slot to address Craig's objections in more detail (instead of launching in conciliatory speech about the role of religion), but he definitely did very very well.
    Have you heard the good news? There is no God!
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #6 - March 07, 2014, 11:11 PM
    Ok, got around to watching it. Craig is pathetic. That bit at the end where he's waffling about how the unvierse could have started at any point if the conditions were there for a universe to srtart, so why did it start when it did? And how a god could have decided to start it when it did blah blah blah.

    Someone should hit him with a brick for wilful stupidity.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #7 - March 07, 2014, 11:19 PM
    It was funny when Craig quote-mined Carroll himself. Why on earth he hoped he'd get away with quote-mining the actual person standing in front of him is a baffling mystery to me, but it happened nonetheless.
    Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #8 - March 08, 2014, 01:06 AM
    Bookmark
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #9 - March 08, 2014, 09:39 PM
    I'm still rather stunned by the stupidity of Craig's comments towards the end of the vid. He seems fixated on the idea that there was all this time going past in "eternity" when the universe could have popped up but didn't, so why didn't it? He doesn't seem to be able to grasp that time isn't relevant, so he's asking the wrong question.
    Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West. bunny
  • God & Cosmology: Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig in Dialogue
     Reply #10 - March 08, 2014, 11:13 PM
    I've watched a few minutes of the shelly one.  Bookmarked this too watch. 

    While we are on the topic of WLC being schooled.   

    I really loved this debate because the oxford philosopher Peter Millican really destroyed him in this debate.

    I highly recommend this.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JVRy7bR7zI
    In my opinion a life without curiosity is not a life worth living
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