WL Craig, PS Williams vs. A Copson, A Ahmed - Cambridge Union Society God Debate, Oct 2011

The motion for this debate was "This House Believes that God is not a Delusion". It took place before a packed house at the Cambridge Union Society on 20th October 2011, as a part of William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Tour 2011.
Proposing the motion were William Lane Craig and Peter S.Williams.
Opposing the motion were Arif Ahmed and Andrew Copson.

For more information on the Reasonable Faith Tour see www.bethinking.org/craig

[@ultimatetruth6186]

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

[@ClusiveC]

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.

[@Davestarz45]

This type of comment ought to be at the start of every comment section on videos about the God debate.

[@amugsgame9936]

+ClusiveC I think Ahmed is a strong debater but I was very disappointed with how he tackled the moral argument. Copson was very poor too. Having said that, I think the moral argument is very unsound and should not be respected.

[@REDCAP32X]

Very unsound and should not to be respected...Should your comment be respected in light of the fact you don't give a reason why its unsound?

[@amugsgame9936]

I don't expect respect for my comment , no!! :P But I can explain to you why the moral argument is unsound if you like. The main problem is that he (WLC) is not able to demonstrate that the intuitions that he appeals to to affirm objective morality cannot exist on naturalism and he isn't even able to make a probabilistic case for how the intuitions of right and wrong are less likely to exist on naturalism as they are on theism. That's a summary of my critique but I can go into more detail if you like! :) Thanks for your nice reply anyway :)

[@REDCAP32X]

Yeah sure id like to hear more

[@christopherjohnson1873]

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?

[@Oners82]

Is there an atheist-theist debate where the theist doesn't bring up morality or cosmological arguments in their opening statement?

[@christopherjohnson1873]

Oners82 At least they aren't textbook fallacies or blatant strawmen... you could say the cosmological argument commits the composition fallacy, but that would itself be a strawman.

[@christopherjohnson1873]

***** Well, they try to, although obviously you don't agree with the arguments they provide. They can't be faulted because you simply disagree with what they are saying. I could run with your reasoning and ask whether atheists ever provide "actual responses" to theistic arguments.

[@christopherjohnson1873]

***** That's a bit of a semantics game there... the arguments theists commonly offer have premises which they try to support evidentially (again you can disagree, but that is no fault of them), and as the conclusion of a valid argument follows necessarily from the premises, the warrant for the premises is also a warrant for the conclusion.

[@christopherjohnson1873]

***** If you disagree with the arguments that's fine, but that doesn't mean you can argue from there to say the arguments don't work.

[@pepperachu]

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.

[@joachim595]

It’s also quite easy to think you don’t need any of this “God crap” when many in that room are in their early 20s, relying on a false idea of that you’re invincible, can party all night without having any health consequences. Nothing is taken seriously with life so you can just laugh at the theists for being stupid people when most at that time haven’t gone through any severe drama in life.

[@ManForToday]

@@joachim595 They don't even need severe drama, they just need to go out of their dorms that isn't a gap-year in Thailand to see real events in the world and understand them. I was like them (earlier on), but I accepted theism after studying philosophy (in a great department) and I honestly couldn't resist changing my mind in the end.

[@StallionFernando]

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

[@valkyrieloki1991]

@Psicólogo Miguel Cisneros I completely agree.

[@itachigrain4651]

@Psicólogo Miguel Cisneros It's the British parliamentary style mate. It's supposed to get rowdy and expressive! Hahahaha (I am a Dr. Craig fan and he just gave an interview on this with on WiseDisciple channel)

[@joachim595]

@@itachigrain4651which video was that?

[@jamesbeltran354]

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.

[@miller8084]

Enjoyable format and arguementation. Thanks for posting.

[@brucefetter]

great format. well done!

[@YesWeCantaloupe]

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

[@josephno1347]

Wear underwear

[@peterswilliamsvid]

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.

[@ingodwetrustgachatuber2747]

so what has that got to do with his ability to mop the floor with others?

[@noecontreras7068]

in God we trust, gacha tuber 🙏🏽😂😂😂😂

[@raspberrymist]

@@ingodwetrustgachatuber2747 this is Peter Williams he’s in the video!! I think he’s just letting us know because some people may think his hand is shaking because he’s nervous.

[@michaelglynn3340]

That is a cruel statement. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[@TheADDFiles-yk4dc]

The opposition brought a butter knife to a gun fight.

[@amck4648]

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.

[@ClusiveC]

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.

[@amugsgame9936]

+ClusiveC Certainly, a lot of athiests make this mistake in debates but I actually believe that I think theists love it when they do because it means that the athiests are NOT spotting the actual fallacies in the moral argument which are pretty plain to see.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

​@@amugsgame9936 The argument that "moral subjectivism" is an objective assertion undoes any supposed fallacy. There IS a singular standard necessary to conceive morality and alternative systems and deviations. As for "torturing innocent children," we observe that cruelty by torturers of diverse kinds, not just psychoanalytical bad childhood types, but ideological greed-superpower types, fascisto-cultural types, and so on. A stronger argument is that evolution by natural selection by physical laws relates to the material explanation of human capacities to act kindly and fairly, say, in mother-child bonding, and marriage, and it is from that biological standard that deviations occur. Theistic standards prioritizing lovingkindness led to its derived morality of Human Rights, including allowance for varying moral systems. Islam, for example, has about forty nations that have formed an alternative Islamic Cairo agreement, while the US has failed to sign the Econ,Soc, and Cultural half of the UN UDHR Covenants. The USSR failed to sign the Civil and Political half when it existed.

[@REDCAP32X]

56:41 WLC gets up and the smackdown begins

[@pepperachu]

A triple X throw down

[@J42337]

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.

[@MJ-jf7zw]

Servant of God mode

[@jaredgreenhouse6603]

No, that's what happens when you are endowed with guidance from Allah. Checkmate.

[@johnelliott5859]

Just because it is not possible to prove god's non existence doesn't mean god exists. Unfortunately, religions still have enough hold on societies that the norm is a belief in a god.

[@johnelliott5859]

Many of those walking through the non delusion door did not believe in a god, according to WLC's instructions.

[@johnelliott5859]

@Psicólogo Miguel Cisneros I don't have sufficient reason to believe there is a god; particularly the god of the bible.

[@carmeister_]

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

[@jorgelopez-pr6dr]

He is the Protestant St. Thomas Aquinas of 21st century.

[@osmosis321]

"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

[@MessianicJewJitsu]

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

[@countrydp]

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

[@StoneCampbellforLife]

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

[@Gatorbeaux]

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

[@ramigilneas9274]

😂

[@orbdustFilms]

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.

[@Oners82]

Completely wrong on so many accounts. First he did not say that future physics refuted the argument, he was referring to CURRENT QM models that are all entirely probabilistic and do not rely on causality to make prediction at all. Not to mention that you are committing a logical fallacy of argument from ignorance by assuming the argument true because it is not yet proven false. Also this had nothing to do with the ontological argument, it referred to the cosmological argument. His refutation of the ontological argument had nothing to do with science, it was purely philosophical. And second, lack of strict causality and the entrance of randomness would have no effect on science whatsoever. Quantum mechanics is the most accurate theory in all of science and it is COMPLETELY PROBABILISTIC. If the underlying process is truly random it would have no effect on science whatsoever, we analyse it using STOCHASTIC techniques. Everything you said is utter nonsense and you act like atheists are the dumb ones, hilarious lol!

[@CallousCarter]

+orbdustFilms Why do you insist on reading William Lane Craig who is a religious scholar for accurate modern physics? It also confuses me why so many atheists read physicists for the best religious philosophy/history. We did find something that violated traditional notions of cause and effect. It's called Quantum Mechanics and we found it in the 1920s/30s (so you are only just century out of date, not bad for a theist). Since then we've been confirming and finding reinforcing evidence for QM ever since.

[@reecemacaulay2158]

Daniel Carter my gosh ... Qm is utter crap ... It almost all unsubstantiated guess work ...

[@Lucas98M]

Daniel Carter takes more faith to trust in QM with our almost hundred years of experience of it.

[@Seadogpreedy]

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.

[@ogunitracy]

@Birdieupon May I ask the difference?

[@speedy_gunzalez]

WLC debated the entire room and still won

[@gabrielr.7423]

Belief in God is not a delusion.

[@qqqmyes4509]

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

[@maciekminkiewicz2852]

No, because the Dilemma gives only 2 options where there are 3. The 3 and true one is: “God IS good, therefore He wills everything to be good”.

[@KnowItsTrue]

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

[@richyburnett]

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.

[@Resenbrink]

Dream on

[@jonathanhauhnar8434]

@@Resenbrink no you!

[@pascotemplo8869]

Praise God for you

[@lukerobinson4884]

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

[@Mentat1231]

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".

[@bornbold]

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

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@frederickfairlieesq5316]

If the unfathomable complexity of God does not require a designer, how could something less complex than God require a designer? Correct me if I’m wrong, but is there any facet of the Big Bang or the universe itself that requires an explanation that does not also apply to God? Can you or anyone else explain what it means for an eternal mind outside of time and space to create time and space by simply thinking it or saying it somehow? Why couldn’t I skip all that extra baggage of theism and just say the universe has always existed in some form just as God has always existed? In both worldviews, the universe exists, but in your worldview you have the extra burden of explaining why an infinitely complex being is required in order to have a universe. Yet you believe you do not have the burden of explaining why and how this being exists while demanding an explanation for the existence of the universe from the unbeliever. So based on ontological economy and parsimony alone, theism is strongly disconfirmed.

[@stykface]

Good watch. Tough crowd though.

[@gmn545]

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.

[@lightolineo551]

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

[@Abc-cp6cb]

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

[@rationalsceptic7634]

Abc Bullshit! Theists are all deluded people..who get everything wrong logically and historically...God is just a man made assertion and expression not a fact or explanation!

[@joshuaphilip7601]

@@rationalsceptic7634 yes we are all deluded. Nevermind those pioneers of science and Philosophy..

[@rationalsceptic7634]

@@joshuaphilip7601 kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmOwaX-aaJ6HsKc kzbin.info/www/bejne/e56WZGx3ocqdf9U kzbin.info/www/bejne/e56WZGx3ocqdf9U kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGOUXoFrm8ekY5o kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGOUXoFrm8ekY5o kzbin.info/www/bejne/eGOUXoFrm8ekY5o

[@joshuaphilip7601]

@@rationalsceptic7634 sigh

[@joshuaphilip7601]

@Jonathan Billings when I say "pioneer" I'm referring to those part of the scientific Revolution. I also never claimed that people who disagreed with them _were_ deluded..

[@knap-dalf2215]

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

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@psb1964]

Does the 'reasonable faith tour' have groupies?

[@joelalvarez7694]

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

She's cute tho...

[@edwinisagholi78]

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

[@filips1218]

it's not an intellectual isssue, rather a heart's.

[@osmosis321]

Corrected by whom, and with what evidence?

[@memphismike82]

Osmosis lol you have to resort to evasion, i do have a choice idiot.your not capable of shutting me up

[@osmosis321]

mike jones No just sick of you polluting my thread with your bottom-of-the-barrel bullshit.

[@memphismike82]

Osmosis so you say

[@SHIBBYiPANDA]

@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

[@Rico-Suave_]

Watched all of it, apparently again

[@richyburnett]

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.

[@GreatAlexander1983]

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

[@Birdieupon]

@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!

[@Mentat1231]

So, you're saying that a causal relation without equal exchange is not "sensible"? What does that mean? Where is the inherent contradiction or logical incoherence in saying "X caused Y, and did so without pre-existing material?".

[@relarerfhjk]

"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.

[@ronaldov09]

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

[@Mentat1231]

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...

[@Mentat1231]

(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.

1:20:34 She is gone.:)

[@ingodwetrustgachatuber2747]

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

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@relarerfhjk]

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

[@justifiedFaith209]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@DickJohnson3434]

"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.

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@TheTruthgeneral]

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

[@kvlt1349]

"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.

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@Birdieupon]

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

[@420MusicFiend]

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

[@johncassles7481]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

No, you are saying that causality is defined as a causer acting on something else to produce an effect. That is wrong. Causality does not require the "something else", it only requires two events related in such a way that one is the consequence of the other.

[@RMGWOO]

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

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@gmn545]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

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

[@Mentat1231]

The only models with any substantiation have Inflation as the beginning of time, and Guth and Vilenkin both refer to it this way. We're going in circles here, because I agree that Guth and Vilenkin use guarded language, but I disagree that the implication of their work isn't a beginning of the Universe via some unknown first cause.

[@Mentat1231]

He used a phrase that he defined explicitly ("X comes into being, if an only if it exists at some time T, and there is not time T* prior to T at which X exists"). That is its own concept, and a very simple one. Ex materia, ex nihilo, and ex third option have nothing to do with it.

[@gmn545]

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..."

[@Mentat1231]

Um... I mean my response to you (below) with points numbered 1-3 (the 4th point was a response to your statement about how philosophers view Dawkins and his book)....

[@aznprodigy17]

Actually "Ex Materia" refers to the assertion that materials existed before God, and thus creation "came out of" materials which pre-existed God.

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

Actually, you committed a reverse composition fallacy. If a broad concept implies a cause, it doesn't mean that anything particular about its subdivisions entails a cause. The broad concept of coming into being requires a cause, regardless of whether the subdivisions have a special entailment of a cause. I don't insist that there actually are any other options, I'm just emphasizing how irrelevant such options would be.

[@Mentat1231]

2) Actually, you have not been asking me for an explanation of the mechanism. You have been stating that any causal relation needs an "affector" who causes it, pre-existing stuff to be affected, and the subsequent effect. I have shown that that is nonsense. All you need is two events x and y, such that y is the consequence of x. 3) I never said there actually was a third option; all I said was that "coming into being" means the same thing regardless of "materia", "nihilo", or any other option

[@Mentat1231]

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...

[@Mentat1231]

On what grounds was it mistaken? That's the whole point. What makes one answer morally right and the other wrong? And how do we even know there IS right answer or a wrong one? It is moral intuition. Plain and simple.

[@Mentat1231]

2) I have never "conflated" creatio ex nihilo with creatio ex materia (and, you might want to look up the defintiion of "conflate", because that isn't a correct use of it). The phrase "coming into being" only has one meaning. If the event of "coming into being" happens to correspond with an event of creatio ex nihilo or ex materia (or some unknown third option) so be it. The univocal meaning of "coming into being" is unaltered.

[@Seadogpreedy]

Hey relarefhik So help me out if I don't have a clue! In the debate that this discussion is about the moral argument has premise that says 'if god doesn't exist, then objective moral don't exist'. Two points of interest are; one this implies that god is the originator of objective morals (no confusion between values and obligations) and therefore proof is needed to show that a god is the source of these values; and the argument to the best of my knowledge is not following the rules of formal lo

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

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.

[@Mentat1231]

Craig is referring to generic "coming into being". Even if there were some third option, besides ex-nihilo and ex-materia (and I'm not saying there is, but even if there were), his statements would apply to it as well. He appeals to our intuitions about "coming into being" in general, and argues that, if things could just pop into being uncaused from nothing, we'd have a very different world around us (one in which science could not function).

[@sambutler9927]

There could be necessary functions of quantum behavior, and honestly I don't know how we could tell whether they're contingent or necessary. It seems plausible, given our current understanding of physics, that quantum behavior could give rise to space, time and matter - I think the only question that remains is why there is so much more matter than anti-matter, with a few speculative explanations competing for attention.

[@axe414]

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?

[@axe414]

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.

[@maxavail]

[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.

[@gmn545]

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).

[@lamplighteyes]

You mean you have a video on your channel with 3 arguments against that point? If so I'll go and have a look :) I can only count one in the comments here (i.e. the Leibnizian ontological argument which is obviously only a reason to call the "who designed the designer" argument stupid if it refutes it definitively (in which case it would also definitively prove the existence of God too, no?!)

[@Mentat1231]

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).

[@GeoffNelson]

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

[@Mentat1231]

TYPO: "visible OR otherwise".

[@rileytaylor1335]

Which side won BY VOTES?

[@glennsimonsen8421]

WLC

[@sambutler9927]

As to 'having always existed', I don't think that's even a conceivable idea before the big bang, if time as well as space & matter began at the big bang, which seems to be what cosmology & physics is coming up with right now.

[@gmn545]

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).