I reject the idea of the personality of the first cause. I also reject the idea that the first cause must be greater than the universe. The term 'greater' is somewhat subjective but I think we can all agree that chain reaction is a thing and can produce things greater than the force of the initial event.

I've never understood Scaly's hatred of WLC... every few months I bump this thread with a video and he spews the same stuff out.

I get that you think his arguments are weak but what's with the emotional reaction every time?

This post was edited by IceMage on Jan 9 2017 11:49am

Honestly - I don't like his face. He has a very punchable face.

Yeah, but Aristotelian logic is kind of a joke, and modern logic is for computer languages, not proving the existence of god.

WLC isn't exactly doing truth tables here. He is using logic, an art concerning deductive knowledge, and generalizing to inductive knowledge.

In Aristotelian logic, as long as the form of the syllogism is correct, it doesn't matter what the actual terms are, they are correct too. It all works if the argument is A+B=C, but if start adding qualitative terms instead of generic quantitative symbols you get true statements like:



And you can make Venn Diagram progressions that look like:



I don't think he is that great of a philosopher. He knows enough Aristotelian logic, the syllogism stuff, to make Aquinas more digestible for a modern audience. But like Anselm and the original ontological argument, he really reaches for the stars sometimes.

Honestly, I hate logic, lol. Least favorite area of philosophy.



Stephen Hawking claims that the existence of a law like gravity itself could be enough to catalyze some sort of immense reaction.



Lol. Visceral reactions are as valid as any IMO.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jan 9 2017 12:00pm

His argument is not Aquinas' cosmological argument which would be the argument from contingent facts.


"By faith alone do we hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist" - Summa Theologica I.46
"The most efficacious way to prove that God exists is on the supposition that the world is eternal." - Summa Contra Gentiles I.13

What are you referring to? His argument uses modern mathematical logic as far as I can tell. Why shouldn't that be used for arguing the existence of God, when it's the only thing that can be used for arguing anything?



I'm pretty sure Aristotelian logic does not consider this a valid argument form. If it does, it's nonsense and Craig clearly is not using it. I'm not familiar with Aristotelian logic but I have a hard time believing it would still be talked about if it was that useless. This is a most basic example of a fallacy.

Logic is boring and dull, but whether we like it or not mathematics and logic are fundamentally the basis for all rational thought. Much like philosophy in general, you cannot avoid it, attempts to avoid it only result in using logic anyway, just poorly. It need not be formalistic, but all discussion on any topic that attempts to come to some conclusion must use it. Remember, logic is merely something we invented to describe the world, and to think.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Jan 9 2017 12:56pm

Either way doesn't answer the main problem. God would not have created a world in which the amount of suffering in our world is possible in the first place. Arguing why God doesn't "get rid" of evil isn't relevant because that would imply God made a mistake. He should (could?) not have created it in the first place. Indeed this problem is likely insoluble.

Pretty high quality video + channel, at any rate. I might use their reading plan in my planned read through the Bible.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Jan 17 2017 03:15pm

I think that the free will defenses + the Christian story of the Fall really do a surprisingly good job at defending the three-omni-God.
The problem of natural suffering still is the #1 argument against an omnibenevolent God.

What is wholly good but God (which is goodness itself)?
The world is not identical with God and after all, only God is wholly good. As long as the world is not identical with God then the world can not be wholly good.

The structure of argument is perfectly fine; the example he gave just happens to be a non-sequitur (ie, the conclusion does not follow from the premise). "All dogs have 4 legs" is not the same statement as "All animals with 4 legs are dogs", which is what you'd have to claim for the statement to be true.

This post was edited by Magicman657 on Jan 17 2017 05:00pm