Dr. Lawrence Kruass Caught Lying (+Krauthammer)

Published September 10, 2017September 10, 2017 by Papa Giorgio

Originally Posted November 2013

The second part is the ongoing debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Lawrence Krauss. This ends the debate — effectively — any discussion of Craig’s use of the BGV Theorum. Two places to go to read the dialogue of this debate ending in full — which shows Dr. Krauss to be intentionally misrepresenting Dr. Vilenkin’s work. The first place to go is of course one of the principle players site, Dr. Craig (above and below):

“Honesty, Transparency, Full Disclosure” and the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem

The second place to go has a good summary and bullet point addition to the above, and where I found this nugget… which shows Dr. Kruass apparently wanted to hide what he knew was, a) a trouncing of himself in a public debate (yes, Dr. Craig is that good), b) willfully trying to hide his willful miss-characterization of Dr. Vilenkin’s work, or c), both.

(Via Wintery Knight) ~ “UPDATE: Dr. Craig reports that Dr. Krauss refused to let the organizers live-stream the three Australia debates, as well as refusing to let the Australian Broadcasting Corporation live-broadcast the three debates.”

Wow. As an ex-con, and someone who has raised boys that are actively wanting to be in law enforcement ~ (the oldest is part way done getting into the Sheriff’s … although he may be going active duty soon if they accept him into EOD, versus if he is going to stay in the airwing of the Corp as a reservist) ~ I know intimately what covering up a lie looks like. Dr. Krauss fits the criteria — fidgeting with which drink he is going to choose while Dr. Craig responds, to his mannerisms setting up the email, to his trying not to have the debate go public — he is truly “busted”!

(The description for the video below) In a mention of his interview with Charles Krauthammer, Dennis Prager revisits the insanity of recent positions within atheistic cosmology. The astrophysicist Dennis Prager refers to, Lawrence Krauss, who was recently shown to be dishonest in a public forum on this very issue

Five Reasons Why You Can Believe God Exists

Published May 2, 2016 by Papa Giorgio

One in five Americans now identify as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. How would you identify yourself? Philosopher and apologist Dr. William Lane Craig presents five reasons why belief in God makes good rational sense.

For more resources visit: http://www.reasonablefaith.org
For more resources from the John Ankerberg Show visit: http://www.jashow.org

An Example of “Begging the Question”

Published February 22, 2016June 17, 2016 by Papa Giorgio

In a discussion where the person refused to focus on the topic — but wanted instead to move to William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), he [Tim C.] challenged me with the following syllogism, expecting it to be sound.

Here is the challenge:

1.) Every material thing that begins to exist has a material cause.
2.) If theism is true, the universe does not have a material cause.
3.) The universe is material.
4.) The universe began to exist.
5.) Therefore, theism is false.

This is better than my own formulation. Borrowed from Cale N.

Premise one is simply “begging the question,” so if that is enough for you, fine. But here is the conversation that got nowhere because of the presuppositions of Tim.

One commentator did rewrite Tim’s first premise to encapsualte what is in it:

“The material cannot be caused by the immaterial” ~ Thomas B.

Yep, that about sums it up.

FYI, I am Calvin of Calvin and Hobbs, Tim is Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons.

Premise 1 is embedded with philosophical naturalism. In other words, you just took a metaphysical position to disprove metaphysics.

The responses to me are shameful, but I dredge on hoping my point restated will sink in:

Try and challenge P1, why don’t you?

This is the only time I really delve into #’s 2 and 3, I try to stay focused on #1

The jump from Premise 2 and premise 3 are unconnected. They are a non-sequitur, making the syllogism false. A material universe has no bearing on whether its cause was immaterial or material.

What premise don’t you accept? The syllogism is valid, if you are questioning its soundness, challenge a premise.

So far, premise 1 is metaphysical (embedded with philosophical naturalism/assumption). Premise 2 and 3 are unrelated, and 5 does not come naturally from your metaphysical stance in #1 [it is demanded]…

How is P1 of the KCA not “metaphysical” then?

No, Craig’s is not metaphysical, because it merely states: “whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.”

(It does not posit a metaphysical claim, which is why Dawkins agrees with Intelligent Design but in the end of the documentary [Expelled] says that the best explanation is space aliens.)

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.

2.1 Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite.

2.11 An actual infinite cannot exist.
2.12 An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
2.13 Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

2.2 Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition.

2.21 A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite.
2.22 The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
2.23 Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

(Reasonable Faith)

Scientism, materialism, empiricism, existentialism, naturalism, and humanism – whatever you want to call it… it is still a metaphysical position as it assumes or presumes certain things about the entire universe. D’Souza points this a priori commitment out:

Naturalism and materialism are not scientific conclusions; rather, they are scientific premises. They are not discovered in nature but imposed upon nature. In short, they are articles of faith. Here is Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin:

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a priori commitment, a commitment — a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Dinesh D’Souza points to this in his recent book, What’s So Great about Christianity (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), 161 (emphasis added).

Sorry. You skipped right by Craig’s support for P1.

Your premise #1 says “whatever begins to exist has a material cause.”
Craig does not say in his premise #1 that “whatever begins to exist has an immaterial cause.”

Which would be the exact opposite of your premise… BOTH, then, would start with a metaphysical point in that case.

Do you see Tim C. where you premise #1 went astray?

There was some cross-talk about what Dr. Craig appealed to in his premise number one, I said the law of cause and effect, Tim C. said intuition. I merely excerpted a portion from Dr. Craig’s book, On Guard. (In other words, I let Dr. Craig define his own position.) Back to the main premise of why I am rejecting his premise number one.

After repeating myself on Premise #1 and Tim C. rejecting my refutation of his first premise, I simply state [again]: “In premise one… you assume the conclusion.”

No I don’t. What have you ever seen just pop into existence in our experience without a material cause? Nothing! Any sincere seeker of the truth would acknowledge this. It is the SAME EXACT support Craig gives for his defense of P1. EXACT. SAME.

If you reject my formulation you must reject Craig’s defense of his P1. Sorry, can’t go both ways on this!!

No, Craig does not assume a metaphysical position like you did.

[….]

Your Premise:

Every material thing that begins to exist has a M-A-T-E-R-I-A-L cause.

Craig’s Premise

Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.

REWRITING Craig’s like yours

Whatever begins to exist has an I-M-M-A-T-E-R-R-I-A-L cause of its existence.

Tim still is not getting it so I reword it a bit:

No, Craig does not assume a metaphysical position like you did.

He didn’t assume his conclusion. You essentially said:

Since there is no God,
all theistic proofs are invalid.
Since the theistic proofs are invalid,
there is no God.

Robert A. Morey, The New Atheism: And the Erosion of Freedom (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R 1986), p. 57.

He still does not get it, so I state that this isn’t Rocket science, it is philosophy 101:

… you cannot assume your conclusion in the first premise. You exclude God in Premise 1, Craig doesn’t exclude God or exclude naturalism in his first premise.

Again, what support do you have to deny P1? You need support, bucko.

Try and address the issue, and not fallaciously claim I’m begging the question.

I am done… if you don’t get that your syllogism is as bad as this:

(1) Fido is Joe’s dog.
(2) Fido is a mother.
(3) Therefore, Fido is Joe’s mother.

Then you need to rush out and get Philosophy for Dummies.

Tim C. responds:

Haha!!! You are so transparent I think you may be a ghost! You clearly can’t defeat P1 and are disingenuously slinking away under the cover of a bogus accusation.

Your syllogism isn’t valid. Good grief!!! Jesus weeps for his modern day “apologists”!!

No, you are defining God out of the picture in Premise #1… if you cannot see that you are on some heavy pain pills. When you say “Every material thing that begins to exist has a material cause,” you are already giving an answer” [your conclusion].

You assumed PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM in your premise #1 — you are assuming — then — a metaphysical position [which you reject in your conclusion].

Atheist philosopher Dr. Monton points this out:

If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism – the philosophical position that restricts all explanations in science to naturalistic explanations – it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. More and more evidence could come in suggesting that a supernatural being exists, but scientific theories wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge that possibility.

Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design ~ Apologetics315 h/t

And the aim of a proper syllogism is not to exclude in your first statement what your conclusion should.

Again, Craig did not exclude anything in his premise #1

Again, please attempt to offer evidence against my P1. Apparently you can’t. Your only possible claim is the universe, which just goes to show that the KCA itself is pretty much question begging. Hey if you’ll admit that, we’re cool.

No, the KCA is not begging the question, it is allowing the 2nd (and subsequently 2.1 and 2.2) to help reach a conclusion.

You premise #1 excludes theism. Craig’s does not exclude atheism.

+++++
Again
+++++

Your Premise:

Every material thing that begins to exist has a M-A-T-E-R-I-A-L cause.

[Your cause can only be material]

Craig’s Premise:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.

[Craig’s cause could be material, or, it could not be]

Tim C. still didn’t get it. Tim is the epitome of inserting his presuppositions into a premise, I can picture Francis Schaeffer smiling in heaven. I would merely rewrite the original horrible syllogism with this horrible one:

Every material thing that begins to exist has a material cause.
The universe is material.
The universe began to exist.
Since there is no material explanation for the beginning of the universe
A theistic cause seems plausible.

The Law of Cause and Effect (Sproul and Craig)

Published February 22, 2016February 22, 2016 by Papa Giorgio

The video is by Dr. R.C. Sproul, followed by Dr. William Lane Craig’s explanation from his book, On Guard, explaining the first premise from the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Another good article is found by Dr. Jeff Miller at Apologetic Press, where I get this definition from for clarity:

“causality,” in physics, is “the principle that an event cannot precede its cause” McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (2003), pub. M.D. Licker (New York: McGraw-Hill), sixth edition, cf., causality.

PREMISE I

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

I think that the first premise, that whatever begins to exist has a cause, is virtually undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth. For something to come into being without any cause whatsoever would be to come into being from nothing. That is surely impossible. Let me give three reasons in support of this premise:

1) Something Cannot Come from Nothing. To claim that something can come into being from nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you’ve got the magician, not to mention the hat! But if you deny premise 1, you’ve got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.

This isn’t rocket science. In The Sound of Music, when Captain Von Trapp and Maria reveal their love for each other, what does Maria say? “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.” We don’t normally think of philosophical principles as romantic, but Maria was here expressing a fundamental principle of classical metaphysics. (No doubt she had been well trained in philosophy at the convent school!)

Sometimes skeptics will respond to this point by saying that in physics subatomic particles (so-called “virtual particles”) come into being from nothing. Or certain theories of the origin of the universe are sometimes described in popular magazines as getting something from nothing, so that the universe is the exception to the proverb “There ain’t no free lunch.”

This skeptical response represents a deliberate abuse of science. The theories in question have to do with particles originating as a fluctuation of the energy contained in the vacuum. The vacuum in modern physics is not what the layman understands by “vacuum,” namely, nothing. Rather in physics the vacuum is a sea of fluctuating energy governed by physical laws and having a physical structure. To tell laymen that on such theories something comes from nothing is a distortion of those theories.

Properly understood, “nothing” does not mean just empty space. Nothing is the absence of anything whatsoever, even space itself. As such, nothingness has literally no properties at all, since there isn’t anything to have any properties! How silly, then, when popularizers say things like “Nothingness is unstable” or “The universe tunneled into being out of nothing”!

When I first published my work on the kalam cosmological argument back in 1979, I figured that atheists would attack premise 2 of the argument, that the universe began to exist. But I didn’t think they’d go after premise 1. For that would expose them as people not sincerely seeking after truth but just looking for an academic refutation of the argument.

What a surprise, then, to hear atheists denying premise 1 in order to escape the argument! For example, Quentin Smith of Western Michigan University responded that the most rational position to hold is that the universe came “from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing”—a nice close to a Gettysburg Address of atheism, perhaps!

This is simply the faith of an atheist. In fact, I think this represents a greater leap of faith than belief in the existence of God. For it is, I repeat, literally worse than magic. If this is the alternative to belief in God, then unbelievers can never accuse believers of irrationality, for what could be more evidently irrational than this?

2) If Something Can Come into Being from Nothing, Then It Becomes Inexplicable Why Just Anything or Everything Doesn’t Come into Being from Nothing. Think about it: Why don’t bicycles and Beethoven and root beer just pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can’t be anything about nothingness that favors universes, for nothingness doesn’t have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness, for there isn’t anything to be constrained!

I’ve heard atheists respond to this argument by saying that premise 1 is true of everything in the universe but not of the universe. But this is just the old taxicab fallacy that we encountered in chapter 3. You can’t dismiss the causal principle like a cab once you get to the universe! Premise 1 is not merely a law of nature, like the law of gravity, which only applies in the universe. Rather it’s a metaphysical principle that governs all being, all reality.

At this point the atheist is likely to retort, “All right, if everything has a cause, what is God’s cause?” I’m amazed at the self-congratulatory attitude of students who pose this question. They imagine that they’ve said something very important or profound, when all they’ve done is misunderstand the premise. Premise 1 does not say that everything has a cause. Rather it says that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Something that is eternal wouldn’t need a cause, since it never came into being.

Ghazali would therefore respond that God is eternal and uncaused. This is not special pleading for God, since this is exactly what the atheist has traditionally said about the universe: It is eternal and uncaused. The problem is that we have good evidence that the universe is not eternal but had a beginning, and so the atheist is backed into the corner of saying the universe sprang into being without a cause, which is absurd.

3) Common Experience AND Scientific Evidence Confirm the Truth of Premise 1. Premise 1 is constantly verified and never falsified. It’s hard to understand how anyone committed to modern science could deny that premise 1 is more plausibly true than false in light of the evidence.

So I think that the first premise of the kalam cosmological argument is clearly true. If the price of denying the argument’s conclusion is denying premise 1, then atheism is philosophically bankrupt.

William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), 75-78.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s Contingency Argument ~ Reasonable Faith

Published December 20, 2015 by Papa Giorgio

See as well the One-Minute Apologist on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
View the Kalam Cosmological Argument animation video
Infinite Regress and the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument, Reasonable Faith

Kalam Cosmological Argument ~ History and Argument

Published November 25, 2015July 6, 2016 by Papa Giorgio

The following short documentary on the Kalam Cosmological Argument was made by http://www.damaris.org.

Based on Sufficient Reason

(See an excellent article at The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

P1) A contingent being exists.

This contingent being is caused either (1) by itself, or (2) by another.
If it were caused by itself, it would have to precede itself in existence, which is impossible.

P2) Therefore, this contingent being (2) is caused by another, i.e., depends on something else for its existence.

P3) That which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (3) another contingent being, or (4) a non-contingent being (necessary) being.

If 3, then this contingent cause must itself be caused by another, and so onto infinity.

P4) Therefore, that which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (5) an infinite series of contingent beings, or (4) a necessary being.

P5) An infinite series of contingent beings (5) is incapable of yielding a sufficient reason for the existence of any being.

P6) Therefore, a necessary being (4) exists!

Based on the Principle of Existential Causality

Some limited, changing being[s] exist.
The present existence of every limited, changing being is caused by another.
There cannot be an infinite regress of causes of being.
Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present existence of these beings.
This first Cause must be infinite, necessary, eternal, simple, unchangeable and one.
This first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition

A mix of both

Something exists (e.g., I do);
I am a contingent being;
Nothing cannot cause something;
Only a Necessary Being can cause a contingent being;
Therefore, I am caused to exist by a Necessary Being;
But I am personal, rational, and moral kind of being (since I engage in these kinds of activities);
Therefore this Necessary Being must be a personal, rational, and moral kind of being, since I am similar to him by the Principle of Analogy;
But a Necessary Being cannot be contingent (i.e., not necessary) in its being which would be a contradiction;
Therefore, this Necessary Being is personal, rational, and moral in a necessary way, not in a contingent way;
This Necessary Being is also eternal, uncaused, unchanging, unlimited, and one, since a Necessary Being cannot come to be, be caused by another, undergo change, be limited by any possibility of what it could be (a Necessary Being has no possibility to be other than it is), or to be more than one Being (since there cannot be two infinite beings);
Therefore, one necessary, eternal, uncaused, unlimited (=infinite), rational, personal, and moral being exists;
Such a Being is appropriately called “God” in the theistic sense, because he possesses all the essential characteristics of a theistic God;
Therefore, the theistic God exists.

What properties must such a cause of the universe possess? By the very nature of the case, the cause of space and time must transcend space and time and therefore exist timelessly and nonspatially (at least without the universe). This transcendent cause must therefore be changeless and immaterial, since anything that is timeless must also be unchanging, and anything that is changeless must be nonphysical and immaterial (since material things are constantly changing at the molecular and atomic levels). Such an entity must be beginningless and uncaused, at least in the sense of lacking any prior causal conditions, since there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. Ockham’s razor—the principle which states that we should not multiply causes beyond necessity—will shave away any other causes, since only one cause is required to explain the effect. This entity must be unimaginably powerful, if not omnipotent, since it created the universe without any material cause.

Finally, and most remarkably, such a transcendent first cause is plausibly personal. Two reasons can be given for this conclusion. First, the personhood of the first cause of the universe is implied by its timelessness and immateriality. The only entities which can possess such properties are either minds or abstract objects, like numbers. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations. The number 7, for example, can’t cause anything. Therefore, the transcendent cause of the origin of the universe must be an unembodied mind.

Second, this same conclusion is implied by the origin of an effect with a beginning from a beginningless cause. We’ve concluded that the beginning of the universe was the effect of a first cause. By the nature of the case, that cause cannot have either a beginning of its existence or any prior cause. It just exists changelessly without beginning, and a finite time ago it brought the universe into existence. Now this is exceedingly odd. The cause is in some sense eternal and yet the effect which it produced is not eternal but began to exist a finite time ago. How can this be? If the necessary and sufficient conditions for the effect are eternal, then why isn’t the effect also eternal? How can the cause exist without the effect?

There seems to be only one way out of this dilemma, and that is to say that the cause of the universe’s beginning is a personal agent who freely chooses to create a universe in time. Philosophers call this type of causation “agent causation,” and because the agent is free, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present. Thus, a finite time ago a Creator endowed with free will could have freely brought the world into being at that moment. In this way, the Creator could exist changelessly and eternally but freely create the world in time. By exercising his causal power, he brings it about that a world with a beginning comes to exist? So the cause is eternal, but the effect is not. In this way, then, it is possible for the temporal universe to have come to exist from an eternal cause: through the free will of a personal Creator.

We may therefore conclude that a personal Creator of the universe exists, who is uncaused, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and unimaginably powerful.

William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 16-17.

From the video description:

Logos Apologia made and edited this awesome video which demonstrates the scientific fact of the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God’s existence. Over and over again, it has been demonstrated that science (contrary to popular stereotypes) is on the side of theists and not atheists. From Logos Apologia:

“Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause.”

Why couldn’t natural forces have produced the universe? Because there was no nature and there were no natural forces ontologically prior to the Big Bang—nature itself was created at the Big Bang. That means the cause of the universe must be something beyond nature—something we would call supernatural. It also means that the supernatural cause of the universe must at least be:

✯ spaceless because it created space
✯ timeless because it created time
✯ immaterial because it created matter
✯ powerful because it created out of nothing
✯ intelligent because the creation event and the universe was precisely designed
✯ personal because it made a choice to convert a state of nothing into something (impersonal forces don’t make choices).