http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/...gename=q_and_a

Wait till I get some popcorn.

Ok, go.

This ought to be good. Make it the lite brand...Orville Redenbachers...

Yeah, kinda feel sorry for him, like watching Podunk Hi School take on the Yankees.

That's the kind of logic first year philosophy undergrads do. Perhaps you can link to some of his advanced stuff.

edit: erased useless insult

I'm truly not interested in establishing Craig as a master logician, and I'm equally confident he doesn't much care either. My concern was to show that when he does use logic, as when he uses math (Bayes, for instance which he has employed correctly without claiming to be a genius mathematician), or physics (of which he seems to have more than a layman's understanding), he uses it correctly.

I don't promote Craig as a mathematician, scientist, philosopher or logician. I promote him as a brilliant, articulate defender of Christianity, one of the best of the last 50 years, who correctly uses many methods(logic, philosophy, science and even math) to try to get the Gospel across to an unbelieving world.

Its obvious Craig knows logic.

And if that isn't obvious it should be obvious NotReady does so if he says Craig does then its a no brainer.

All the rest of the **** on this board is just pissing contest. Did I mention one of your regulars likes to piss as a tactic in no money games. What logic led him to that I wonder....maybe logic but certainly not ethics....something to think about while the going is still good if the thought of changing sides ever crossed your mind...

Lol, but we are comparing him to Hawking. I think it is silly to say on the basis of what you quoted that he is better than a random math undergrad at Harvard much less Hawking.

There are widely ranging abilities in math amongst Harvard PhDs. I just meant in that quote that you can't really verify Hawking's skills against mine or say Sklansky's without asking somebody else or looking at awards/degrees. You not being convinced of Hawking's skills could easily be a limitation on your part since you can't even read the work which establishes the floor on his intelligence.

It's silly to claim that my post has anything to do with whether Craig is better than anybody at logic.

Give me a demonstration of Hawking's use of advanced formal logic with quotes and cites.

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Give me an example of Craig doing it first. Craig is the challenger here imo

You were saying that you are not convinced that Hawking is better than Craig. That's fine, you aren't convinced, but you also don't have any of the background to gauge Hawking in the first place, unless you purely go by authority. Or put it this way, name 10 people better than Craig at formal logic. If you can't do that, you don't really know enough formal logic to gauge anybody in that field.

I just happened to start re-reading Craig's book, Reasonable Faith. The introduction is primarily concerned with defining and explaining apologetics. That is Craig's true calling - to be a Christian apologist. It genuinely doesn't matter whether he has the philosophical originality of a Plato, the logical skills of an Aristotle, the math ability of Newton or the science knowledge of Einstein. He is pursuing what he perceives is his calling as a Christian, which is to do apologetics, and to do it rigorously and truly - that's all that matters. So all this baloney about whether Chomsky is a better philosopher, whether Craig understands the esoterics of quantum mechanics, or whether he can beat Hawking at a game of logic is simply irrelevant. What matters is whether he speaks truly about that which he does speak - whether he is rigorous, conscientious and thorough, and whether what he says actually does the job of defending the faith. On those points he is absolutely A+ - and that's all that matters.

From the intro:

Even if Craig actually was Plato, Aristotle, Newton and Einstein all rolled into one and superior to each in their respective disciplines, it wouldn't matter. He even could be and you might not know it because his concern is to defend the faith. So all the flak about his status in whatever discipline is totally irrelevant.

No, you are.

And I'm pretty sure you have no idea what formal logic is, much less what if anything Hawking has ever done in that discipline.

You can't just say stuff that is wrong, and then say it doesn't matter. I agree it doesn't matter. But your statement about Hawking clearly being better at math but probably worse at formal logic is almost impossible.

Yes I do. Hawking said the universe created itself. A logical contradiction.

My post you keep harping on said this:

But Hawking's statement that I was lampooning is easily as illogical as anything Dawkins spouts - one reason I posted it is it reminds me of Dawkins.

and I just repeated it. You have yet to respond to it.

You, on the other hand, continuously make assertions about Craig based on nothing but your own empty arrogance. I know this for a fact because of your laughable inability to understand Craig's fairly simple paper on the anthropic principle and your incredibly funny attempt at a totally irrelevant analogy.

We are talking about formal logic which has nothing to do with Hawking's statement. Again, do you know what formal logic is? I have made no assertions about Craig at all. I think your views are pretty clearly inconsistent, but maybe you don't know enough about math and formal logic to see that.

The anthropic principle was hashed out in a ton of detail and I remember giving up because I didn't think you were going to ever get it.

You are wrong. Hawking might not be correct, but nobody can really prove he is wrong. Well, of course you can prove he is wrong, but you can also prove 1+1=3 etc.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Go back and try to understand what I wrote. It really comes down to how hard it is to say that person A is much better at math than person B, but B is better at formal logic. Given that A has an undergrads level of math training (which Hawking does) it is very hard to happen. The only fact I am using about Craig is that Hawking is much better than him at math, which I got from you. Reread imo

Try to understand what it takes to obtain a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Edit:

Educational Background
Wheaton College — B. A. Communications, high honors 1971
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School — M. A. Philosophy of Religion, summa cum laude 1975
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School — M. A. Church History, summa cum laude 1975
University of Birmingham, England — Ph.D. Philosophy 1977
Universität München, Germany — D. Theol. Theology 1984

I don't know how much math Craig understands - enough to use Bayes, at least. But it's certainly possible to study logic and philosophy to a high degree of competence without pursing very far into math.

I'm using as measurement:

"The probability that the less gifted could learn to equal the more gifted in thinking abilities."

So for instance an amateur experienced chess player has a greater chance of beating an expert than an expert has of beating Kasparov.