However, I would rather see an Oppy vs. Craig debate/discussion, by a lot. Haven't watched these Krauss debates, but it is a general problem for me that Craig's debates on philosophy of religion are rarely with other actual experts on philosophy of religion.

I'm watching this at the moment - Something From Nothing: A Conversation with Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss and it's notable how differently Kruass behaves, how much calmer and less animated he is and how he doesn't interrupt Dawkins at all.

I agree, but it doesn't seem like many of those types of people want to get into these sorts of debates. You should definitely watch when you get a chance. It is nice to see a little more back and forth rather than the typically talking over each other the whole time (although that still happens a bit).

Also, I do enjoy seeing these with people like Krauss because he ( and others) make such bold claims it is nice to see them have to justify the claims even if only to a little extent.

Craig has debated many, many philosophers - and Oppy doesn't have a degree in philosophy of religion. Also, Craig has written several articles on his website addressing some of Oppy's material. My guess is Craig would love to debate Oppy.

Edit: One of the main reasons he debates people like Krauss, Harris, Hitchens, etc., is they have a large popular following and are very misleading in what they say.

I'll agree that Krauss is crass and rude in this series, which even I find off putting. I'd give Craig the overall win in these 3 meetings, mainly because Krauss seems determined to focus on provocation rather than actually address any of the specific points brought up by Craig.

What I don't understanding is what you found misleading. I didn't find anything Krauss said to be dishonest. Rude and off topic at times, yes. But not dishonest.

Meh. Philosophy of religion is kind of a ghetto subject in philosophy--lots of otherwise very good philosophers don't really keep up with the current literature. Oppy is different. His book, Arguing about Gods is probably the best book currently out surveying the major arguments for and against the existence of god. He is also the editor of Oxford University Press's five-volume History of Western Philosophy of Religion and the author of the leading book on the Ontological Argument.

For what it's worth, I'm sure Craig would love to debate Oppy. And I know that the two of them have written articles addressing or reviewing each others' work. But that is kind of my point. Those articles are at a significantly higher level of sophistication and interest (for me) than any of Craig's public debates.

Right, and the more that Craig functions as a popular speaker, the less interesting he is to me as a serious intellectual. I don't have a problem with him doing what he does--he is obviously very good at it. But I don't think these public debates have much to do with serious philosophy.

I didn't mean they were dishonest just what they say is misleading, and I wasn't really talking about the dialogs, though Krauss' use of the Osiris junk shows a lack of research resulting in a misleading position. What's really misleading about Krauss is his equivocation on words like "nothing".

Everytime he tried to define 'nothing' the religious say 'well that's something'. Craig wants to define 'nothing' as 'when only god existed'.

As Van Orman Quin said, language is a social art and context and the behaviours familiar to the speaker matter hugely. They simply couldn't agree on what constitutes 'nothing'.

Were we watching the same debates? I though Krauss answered many of Craig's points, even preempted some of them.

Those crazy religious people just don't seem to realize that something and nothing are equal.

I think 'crazy' is a bit strong, 'deluded' maybe

I still don't understand why there isn't an infinite regression being applied here. No matter how far back Physicists take the argument, theists can just say 'but before that was god and he created the universe from nothing'.

Oh wait... if there was 'nothing' how was their god? Is this yet another definition of 'nothing'? A nothing where there's actually something and that something is god? Or is god nothing? Or is the religious nothing actually something too?

The argument is tied to the concept of contingent vs. necessary. The universe is contingent and so had to have a cause - if its cause is also contingent, it had to have a cause. The regression stops with either nothing or necessity. So you have to believe that all contingent existence came uncaused from nothing or that it had an efficient, necessary cause, which theists identify as God.

If the root of MB's query on infinite regress is a question about whether or not God as cause of the universe is a kind of special pleading, then I don't think the appeal to necessity is an answer in the negative, because the kind of necessity we're talking about is still sui generis.

On the other hand, if you think about the features that traditional religion (especially monotheistic theologies) recognizes as Divine, this doesn't seem surprising.

Here's the first podcast. There will be several more, one a week. This one doesn't get into much of the substance, just general comments about the trip and some on the background for the dialogs.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Reaso...ralia_2013.mp3


This is a link to WLC's latest Question of the Week. He discusses the Vilenkin letter Krauss used in one of the dialogs, with some eye-popping information, including correspondence between him and Vilenkin.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer

I don't understand right now this but I'm going to come back to it because I think it's a digression. It doesn't answer my question about how nothing can include god. If theists are countering Kruass' claims about something coming from nothing by refuting his definition of nothing as actually being something, why can't the same tactic be used to theists about their own definition of nothing?

Nothing means nothing, it doesn't mean 'when there was only god'. If god exists, then perhaps there's never actually been nothing in the theistic sense and something from nothing can only actually occur from the scientific perspective?

Can you put this in simpler terms please?

MB: You ask why it's legitimate to end the regress with God, rather than asking "What caused God?" You didn't actually ask that question in that post but you've asked it before in those terms I think. The implication is "Every effect has a cause except for God which is the first cause" treats God as a special case.

It's a separate question from your question about being and nothingness, so perhaps it is a digression from the part you were interested in, as you say. But I think NotReady's answer about necessity vs contingency is an answer to that question: "Why is it not valid to ask what caused God?" And my point was that as an explanation it still amounts to a kind of special pleading, but that I don't think this is necessarily a problem theologically speaking. All of theology is a "special case", as it were.

I'd take a stab at the nothingness question but I'm not sure if I've got all the context, I haven't listened to that debate yet. And I'm imagining a good bit of the difficulties will entail figuring out exactly what we mean by different words, along with the fact that it's possible Craig would speak of the existence or being of God in a special way, i.e that God's being is not like the existence of an object in the physical universe, and thus speak of there being "nothing" without really meaning that there was a state of affairs in which there was complete non-being. There's also the problem that it seems contradictory to even talk about there being non-being. I'm sure OrP is banging his head on his desk by now reading this

Has there been some response from Krauss regarding the whole background shuffling that supposedly went on? Most of that stuff sounded uberfishy on Krauss' part and sort of hard to believe, so it would be interesting to hear the other side (or 3rd side, for that matter).

Gotcha.

It seems like a contradiction to me. When Krauss tries to define Nothing, Craig yells 'but that's Something' and then goes on to explain how in the theist version of Nothing, there is genuinely nothing, except god.... so isn't an obvious counter 'but that's Something too'! Can genuine Nothing ever have existed when there was always god (and he's Something)?

For Craig to use a counter like 'God's being is not like the existence of an object in the physical universe', don't we now have to start defining 'Something' to prove that god isn't Something... or as you say, is all of religion simply special pleading and there's literally no corner theists can't back out of by playing the 'but he's god' card?

I didn't watch the 4 hour video, but it's really matter of how you view "the universe" and God's relation to it. This thing that you want to call "genuine nothing" (I'm not sure if that's what Craig actually said) is a true total absence of anything. In this case, sure. God's existence violates "genuine nothingness."

But this is different from "nothing" as an "no universe." God can exist without the universe existing. You can't say the same thing about something like "spacetime." Spacetime's existence implies the existence of the universe.

I didn't understand why Krauss got "jumped on" for redefining nothing. I thought his point was valid. Krauss basically stated that what we consider nothing is actually teeming with life given what we "know" about quantum mechanics. I think this is a standard extrapolation of evolutionary biology and physics.

Krauss and WLC were really talking past each other on this point which is a shame because it is an interesting topic. WLC was more coming at it from a purely philosophical point of view of "true nothing" ie not even quantum mechanics.

MB, I think theists typically understand God as a first cause that exists outside of our space time continuum. In addition God is eternal. Therefore all the cosmology arguments that are applied to the universe don't apply to God. You might think that is weak-sauce but that is the reasoning most theists hold.

It is kind of like a person looking into an aquarium. All the rules of the aquarium don't really apply to the human. The fish will breath and exist in a gravitational state that is different to the human. Similarly, God exists outside our realm of time and space.

Correct.

The theistic position is that God created everything out of nothing, not that God didn't exist. The importance of this has traditionally been that it is contrary to other ancient religions and Greek philosophy whose creation accounts were that the gods or God formed the material universe from pre-existing matter. Theism maintains that only God is eternal, everything else came into being from God's creative activity. Theism has never said that there was ever a state of absolutely nothing.

Atheism then comes along and takes away God. If you subtract God from theism then what is left is absolutely nothing. That is the atheist position, not the theistic. But the quantum vacuum isn't absolutely nothing.

lol, did you guys catch the moment in the first debate where Oppy goes to Krauss "Might I suggest that if you say that theologian can't say "I'm wrong" you got to do a lot more reading on the history of theology" and then laughs and mutters "Good heavens..."

More accurately, it is a Christian theist's caricature of the atheist position. In fact, most atheists don't start by presupposing that in the beginning there was nothing. You even see this here, where the criticism of Krauss is that he isn't really talking about nothing, but just an empty universe or whatever.

I haven't watched this particular debate, but I know Krauss' work in and out, and had the distinct displeasure of having to listen to WLC debating people he doesn't hold candle to (like Krauss). This debate about something from nothing is so obvious that I can't understand how WLC can't wrap his head around it. In fact I do, I think he deliberately tries to misinterprate it. Krauss is not talking about quantum vacuum, he speaks of a theory where quantum field theory is united with general relativity. In this framework space and quantum vacuum and everything can pop in existence where there literally was nothing before. NOTHING.

I think you're the one who is confused. It's a well-known fact that QFT and GR aren't compatible with each other, so that "this framework" doesn't exist.

Pod #2:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Reaso...ralia_2013.mp3

WLC also had a QoW answering the question - why are you the most hated Christian philosopher in the world?

Then in the same QoW, answered some other questions, including: