Is there an atheist-theist debate where the atheist doesn't bring up the "god of the gaps" and the genetic fallacy in their opening statement?

Don't even waste your time going into the comment section. It's like they all are - simple dismissals of theistic arguments, very powerful ad hominem attacks directly almost universally at WLC - as if he's the only person in this debate, taking arguments out of context, etc.

I was listening to WLC speak about how this was one of his favorite moments of his career as an apologist. He spoke very respectably about Cambridge and it's history of debate and was honored to be invited. Like an excited child in his reflection of it, he loved all the pomp and style of the set up of this British style of debate. He respected his colleague and noted how the room was already on the side of atheistic beliefs as this was during Richard Dawkins fever, but got up and did his WLC thing. And was pleased with the outcome.

From Pakistan, Craig always very logical with his arguments. God bless.

I wouldn't stand that high while wearing a kilt.

This crowd behaved like little kids from 6th grade, Dr Craig is a true christian and a very wise man, that´s why everything wound up being on God favor and always is going to be like that. God bless you all.

Fun fact: the audience got too vote on who won the debate and they chose WLC.

The opposition brought a butter knife to a gun fight.

May God have mercy on our wealthy nations. It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, but with God, all things are possible.

I haven't gone any further, but where I am at in the debate right now, Ahmed has slyly taken the moral argument out of context by making it a situation where you have to believe in order to have moral values, which is *not* the argument at all. He has a habit of doing this. He did it several times in his 1 on 1 debate with WLC, even into the questioning period where he repeated questions asked slightly out of context. Sneaky version of setting up straw men if you ask me.

William Lane Craig suffers from a a neuromuscular disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which is why his hand shakes. This is a hereditary disorder that involves the slow disintegration of the myelin sheaths around the nerves, resulting in progressive muscular atrophy.

This is WLC in God Mode. So socially aware of his audience and completely disassembling his opponents arguments as he always does. There is a reason that the majority of students walked out of that "non-delusion" door despite them being obviously overwhelmingly skeptical about theism. ... what happens when you are endowed with the holy spirit. Good job WLC. GOD bless you.

"In any case, Spencer, how much effort have you really made to understand these laws in the cultural context of the ancient Near East?" - William Lane Craig

56:41 WLC gets up and the smackdown begins

Enjoyable format and arguementation. Thanks for posting.

Belief in God is not a delusion.

great format. well done!

@SHIBBYiPANDA Craig and Williams won. No surprise there, considering they did amazing.

Interesting place for a debate. Dr. Craig's last speech was pretty impressive! God Bless!

Arif Ahmed trying use undetermined, undiscovered, future physics to disprove premise two of the ontological argument was essentially a bad joke. "We could find out that maybe the quantum vacuum is truly random" - and therefore things don't need causes. That's ridiculous. Further the principle of cause and effect is essential for physics, if not all science. If you somehow discovered some physics that violated the cause and effect principle, you would disprove the logical basis for doing science in the first place, which would immediately delegitimize your discovery. He's offered argument that 1) is self-refuting and 2) assuming future discovery... and that's the best atheism has against the ontological argument. Wow.

01:29:45 WLC mentioned the results from the bar on an episode of Unbelievable and mentioned the ringing bell too

As a former Atheist myself, the final speaker, whilst intelligent is a perfect example of why the atheistic argument is so very dull....not for lack of complexity or genius, but because his obvious scrabbling to a "can we just get on with reality please" tone and scattered reasoning (constant interruptions of evident cognitive dissociation) belies a mind already made up with intuitive animus driving his internal supermarket sweep for arguments. Without realising it himself, he seems far more certain of what he is not certain about, than what he is certain about (something the atheist believes is THE ultimate defence of their intellect and proof of their dedication to facing up to Hard facts). Whilst I respect his position very much, especially given his background, his true convictions (i intuit from his conduct) lie at a much lower level of resolution than his arguments (in this case motivations matter). I think a better question for this debate might be, "is it possible, that a delusion, can also be true/a reality?" because if it is possible that someone who is presently deluded about a fact can still be holding to what is factual, if so then the motion is defunct and also "is love a delusion?" (especially since christianity for example claims that God IS love - in which case does it follow that love IS God or a god and so on and so forth in their world view). This was a good debate but I do think that WLCraig made a good point about the underhanded strategy of the opposition. Its also (again as a former atheist) very telling to see laughter where serious points are being made, perhaps if WL Craig had been waving a loaded gun at he audience simultaneously, they would not be so quick to ignorance, though sadly it would have the same effect in terms of their being unable to see what they have never truly taken the time to envisage....I wonder how many of them will later in life realise, as i did, how shallow their position really is.

I don't care what the atheist argument for moral values without God is, when push comes to shove and when people's patience and tolerance is pushed beyond their individual human limits, those ideas, devoid of the saving power and grace of God, will fail in action. And that often marks the very difference between those of Faith and those without.

Once again WIlliam Lane Craig dominates a discussion with logical arguments-- And at a college no less--

In any case, I'll be fair and simply say that the "who designed the designer" argument is extremely weak (for the reasons I've given). I apologize for using more pejorative terms.

Good watch. Tough crowd though.

does anyone know if that girl (white dress) left of the kilt man is Anna Popplewell (Susan from lion the witch and the wardrobe)?

This debate was good but it would have been so much better if the question was phrased in a better way.

WLC debated the entire room and still won

This man is supposed to be the Head kf the humanist society and yet he brings up the 'god of the gaps' fallacy

@karmaran You haven't watched the video in full then, have you? Craig explicitly explains how Andrew's argument - about Gods being similar to us - works with polytheism but not monotheism, because the nature of the necessary, timeless, space, immaterial, transcendent being is UNlike us!

LOL can't believe people still use the same BS arguments for Jesus being a "Myth", even-though they've been corrected many times.

It was funny watching the girl in the background laughing in the last 20 minutes of the debate lol

hahahahhahahah everytime i need a good laugh. I listen to Copson and Ahmed getting spanked

Badly misplaced because of the specific points I mentioned about each available model. If you're only response is "I have more confidence in Carroll than in Craig", then there is nothing more to say. Time will tell, and I'm open to whatever.

i will agree that the notion of other minds is something we learn as our minds become mature.

I couldn't follow Arif AT ALL just distracted by the laughting girl behind him :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

What a relief to hear such intelligent people speaking in terms complex and sophisticated...about a subject that is so often over simplified....makes me wish I could go to university....if I had any faith that i wouldnt be wasting my money in a politically biased institution hell bent on ramming its political worldview down my throat instead of teaching the subject id pay thousands to learn....am i wrong to worry about that? Sorry to say though...from what i've seen online...oxfords union hall (if thats what its called) is far cooler lol soz guys. Great arguments all round.

Doesn’t the insight of the Euthyphro Dilemma squash premise 1 of the Moral argument?

@SHIBBYiPANDA So... you didn't bother watching to the end to find out?

"They're not idiots in there" Well, having heard some of their questions, I'm not sure I'd agree. One female student asked Craig how he can prove the Christian God exists, when that clearly wasn't the debate topic! I was shocked to hear what are supposedly Britain's brightest and best students trotting out old fallacies like "if God created us, who created God?" and a (badly-articulated) version of Russell's Teapot. I think Craig expected better. Pity he didn't get to rebut Ahmed's points.

All I got from this is people need to eat more veggies! All I hear is constant f@cking coughing!!!

[If by nothing you mean what does not exist, then the answer to the question for why there's something rather than nothing is that nothing does not exist.] So Krauss hasn't demonstrated that something can come from nothing, since nothing does not exist, he doesn't have a starting point.

No, I was comparing it to Penrose's previous reaction to the word "before", due to our classical physics breaking down where we measure time up until (Planck's epoch, 10^-43 of a second). But Penrose went on to say, it wasn't until more recently in cosmology (newer models) that have made him think more about it. And Vilenkin, again, says no satisfactory answer can be given at the moment about what happened "prior" to inflation - thus making the model not about any issue of an absolute beginning.

1:20:34 She is gone.:)

God is NOT, and can NEVER be shown to be a delusion. Period!

@Birdieupon no i did, i just asked before the end because i didn't think they were going to release the results.. sometimes they don't say the results in the videos

I feel the same way about WLC that some people feel about Baryshnikov.

Craig was right. Pretty sly tactic on the atheist's part to put their response to the moral and KCA arguments at the end and protected from rebuttal.

Watched all of it, apparently again

In the post that I was responding to, you directly said that there was no problem with infinite inflation. The BGV theorem shows that there are HUGE problems with infinite inflation, such that absolutely did not happen. Now, whether there was some pre-inflationary period or not is sheer speculation, and there is no motivation for thinking there was.

I did deal with the question, when I said that the bizarreness of the situation is greatly increased by their being neither efficient nor material cause.

The quantum gravity models can be broken down into four categories: Background Flucuation, String, Loop, and Semi-Classical. The first one involves vacuum fluctuations, and didn't outlive the 1980's for good reason. It is a hopeless model. The String options are all subject to the BGV theorem and/or cannot be extended into the infinite past. Trying to extend the Loop Quantum Gravity models into the infinite past causes problems with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, as the accumulating dark...

@Birdieupon May I ask the difference?

Actually Craig almost always mentions the attempts that have been made to get around the absolute beginning (you should see the chapter that he and Sinclair wrote about all these attempts in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology!), he just finds them unsatisfactory for reasons that he explicates.

We did seem to be going around in circles. I don't want to kick a dead horse either, so I don't mind just agreeing to disagree. Thank you for the stimulating (and courteous) conversation. Best wishes.

The theorem does show that the inflation cannot be infinite in the past. And he doesn't say that future findings will be unable to escape the absolute beginning; he says that all attempts thus far have failed.

Sorry Ben I think comments got all mixed up earlier as I was using my mobile to make comments and the app had a few bugs in it. Now being updated.

I'm so glad someone is actually clarifying this point. It was Antony Flew who first started this nonsense about "negative atheism" vs. "positive atheism". Now, it's to the point that people call themselves "agnostic atheists", and don't realize the ramifications (e.g. "agnostic theism" would have to be somehow coherent).

The first debater has been watching WLC debates on You Tube.

Vilenkin deals with the quantum gravity models that have been proposed. A model doesn't need to be successful already to have a flaw pointed out in it. Moreover, lots of other cosmologists have worked on these. Vilenkin (and Krauss and Stenger, etc) make use of quantum mechanics to explain the beginning of Inflation and then GR takes over. But there is still a beginning. No proposed model gets around the beginning successfully.

@toiwin Is God beyond the human words "he is beyond human words" that you said in your post?

That is a very fair and proper assessment, in my opinion.

Wait, did he think that the ancient prayer for rain was for rain at that very moment?

Go back and watch his opening statement during his debate with Peter Millican. He says exactly that: regardless of what any quantum theory does to describe the physical condition of early universe, the BGV conclusion (that he erroneously states is a proof for an absolute beginning) will hold, because it's entirely independent of such results.

1. Glad you're open to that. 2. Vilenkin (and Krauss, et al) equivocates on the word "nothing", which wouldn't give a reason to think an *absolute* beginning occurred. All we do know is that our understanding of cosmology goes only so far at present, and the issue of an "absolute beginning" remains inconclusive and "up for grabs" (as Guth put it). The problem is Craig makes it seem like a conclusion has been reached, by asserting their paper shows this conclusion (when it really doesn't).

And what of premise one? You know... the premise that's actually the foundation of the argument?

Craig does not miss… If his arguments are not strawmanned he’s unbeatable.

Oh, I don't know. If they'd been using Anselm's argument, then the charges of using "existence" as a predicate would have been applicable. On Plantinga's version, this error is not made.

I have listened to both of them on Closer to Truth, as well as Guth on "Cosmic Questions", where Guth explicitly states their find on Inflation has nothing to say about the issue of an "ultimate origin" of the universe, and that issue is "still very much up for grabs" in CtT. Vilenkin does posit a Platonic realm, but again, states all of this in speculation and also states that "there is still this question of what came before Inflation? Apparently I cannot give a satisfactory answer to that..."

People are hating on the god of the gaps argument, but all the theist arguments boils down to god of the gaps argument

For the record, neither Craig nor Williams defended Anselm's form of the argument. They were using something like Plantinga's Modal version of the argument.

I like that chap at 50:00 or so. Sharp clean cut and well spoken

Well, I shouldn't have made such a big deal about the philosophical points, when you were clearly more interested in Craig's use of BGV. It's just that I wanted to clarify that P2 isn't primarily based on the BGV, but on philosophical argument. That being said, the BGV theorem does show that the inflationary period cannot be infinite in the past. It is a big step toward showing that the whole past is finite, since all we have on some "pre-Inflation" period is highly speculative.

"The constants can emerge at random" But, as atheist physicist Steven Weinberg explained, its possible for one constant to be extraordinarily fine-tuned "at random", but to get all 30 simultaneously fine-tuned for life "at random" is completely implausible. He says either there's an unknown physical law which makes them that way, or there must be a designer

This dude PS Williams definitely is reading Craig`s work when he formulated his arguments.Because the way he postulate his arguments is similar to WLC would postulate his arguments.

You can tell this was 11 yrs ago bc the audience looked like the population.

I fully agree that more work has to be done, and that an entire paradigm shift could occur, rendering all these points moot. That's why Premise 2 is (and has been for over 2,000 years) based primarily on the logical impossibility of an infinite past. It is only supplemented by the fact that current science indicates a beginning. And Guth's quote just means that Inflation doesn't describe the way it all started; Guth still maintains that time itself began at the beginning of Inflation.

Craig did NOT say that any quantum theory that will come will fail to address this. He said that all attempts have only moved the question back a step, and that it is "unlikely" that any future attempt will succeed.

1) They can be causative of each other, and thus there are counter-examples to the so-called "affectless effect problem", as if such a problem existed. 2) It is a metaphysical first principle, and the "did I always exist?" response is perfectly relevant since, for one thing, Craig is a substance dualist and doesn't think he is just a re-arrangement of material stuff. And, for another thing, my point #4 (and main response to TBS) shows that "Craig began" and "sperm and egg met up" are...

Necessary functions that are eternal and also caused the universe? A quantum behavior that is outside of time and space? Now if it's necessary, that sounds like something that has a purpose. And can something be the cause of itself?

can someone tell me what is Arif Ahmed's religion ???

Glad you agree. The issue then is, why bother appealing to it all, if more work needs to be done? And not just that, but Guth also states that the issue is inconclusive. You seem to want to insert a conclusion where Guth makes none, but remains open. And this was Craig's problem. And on Premise 1, Craig equivocates on "begins to exist", as he appeals to intuition (citing examples at the macrolevel) that have pre-existing material causes to them... whereas the universe, according to him, doesn't.

Your comment has not appeared here or I cant find it...care to repost so I can demolish it again?

I'm curious to know what properties or potential properties could have always existed. I agree with you that real creation ex-nihilo could only have been done by God.

But I see your point.

And Carroll's quote is something that Borde-Guth-Vilenkin's 2003 paper agree with, stating "inflation alone is not sufficient to provide a complete description of the Universe, and some new physics is necessary in order to determine the correct conditions at the boundary. This is the chief result of our paper." Their theorem proves the moment of expansion had a beginning, not the universe/reality itself. Vilenkin thinks quantum tunneling from "nothing" brought about inflation, but it's speculation.

"Creatio ex whatever (no matter how many options exist)." Only 2 options exist, 1 of which applies to premise 2 while the other one is irrelevant to premise 2.

1. That problem exists when we're talking about causality with regard to the *concrete realm*. Again, Craig himself states that abstract objects can't cause anything. He feels the only option left is an unembodied mind (which has 0 evidence) that affected nothing. 2. That doesn't mean the issue of beginning to exist (on "did I always exist"?) isn't contingent on material stuff. Craig can be a dualist, but even in doing so, there's still the *material* process involved in "bringing into being."

The opener starts by playing word games with the word "delusion". Nor sure I can go any further with it.

Well, I was speaking a bit tongue-in-cheek, I admit, but I think many theists are open to the idea that invisible creatures carried Jesus and Peter at that time. Angels perhaps. Craig isn't just appealing to "some physicists disagree"; in his written work, he actually explicates the specific reasons why many physicists are moving toward deterministic models. Chris Hooley gives a really good lecture on one such motivation here on KZfaq.

And my response to that central position is: 1) P2 is based primarily on the philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past, and so would be valid regardless of current science. 2) Vilenkin has concluded that the Universe did have an absolute beginning (even if he's uncomfortable with the term), and he has been one of many cosmologists who have come to this conclusion, and have defeated all attempts thus far of averting that beginning.

Somehow your question about the "tie" (between "it is possible that God doesn't exist, and therefore He doesn't" vs. "it is possible that God does exist, and therefore He does") got deleted. If you still want an answer, the simplest answer is "possibility is the default position". In any questions of whether something is possible, the default rational position is "yes, until some impossibility is shown".

(continued)... You argued that Craig's quote of Vilenkin is out-of-context, and not consistent with Vilenkin's own view. You were incorrect. Guth may feel otherwise.

"Coming into being" is hardly a univocal term. While I agree and pointed out to you, that it is literally synonymous with creatio, there are two forms of creatio that you are attempting to equivocate. creatio ex materia has been observed to occur all the time, following all the laws of causality.

1. There is one when we're talking about a singular object. How one can be in more than one place at the same time certainly isn't logical (at the classical level) 2. That was the same reaction Penrose gave to the standard Big Bang cosmology, until Inflation came around. And my point on Inflation is, it's quite likely the same applies as well. Where our (classical) physics breaks down, doesn't tell us anything truly fundamental about the universe (as Sean Carroll put it).

There could be as many options as you can imagine, and it wouldn't change anything. Whether there are 2 or 100, Craig's first premise is totally unrelated to those options. It simply says that anything which comes into being (which I've given the explicit definition of) must have a cause, and he argues for that.

What in the world is the girl in the black laughing about around the 1:20:00 mark?

I didn't mention the Big Bang, did I? I said the Universe is an example of ex nihilo. If it isn't, then the pre-Big Bang, Inflationary space is an example of ex nihilo, and every physicist and cosmologist working on it will tell you so (from Krauss to Vilenkin). Craig uses language that only takes into account the fact that X didn't exist prior to T and it does exist now. That's all that it takes to justify the inference to a cause.

[If a horse instantly popping into being right in front of you is coming from non-being (as Craig asserts), then so are virtual particles.] Craig never asserted that. He only asked for a reason why only universes should pop into being uncaused out of non-being. On the other hand, we KNOW virtual particles come from the quantum vacuum, not from non-being, so who is being inconsistent here ?