/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4591271]

Are this guy's books worth reading? I think he has some interesting things to say but the way he argues in public debates is so smug and annoying I find it hard to take him seriously.

[Anonymous No.4591279]

He wins all his debates because logically theism beats atheism as the basis of reality and human existence.

[Anonymous No.4591282]

>>4591279
He wins all his debates because he asserts that atheism has no meaning in life and we need an eternal lawgiver to justify our morality. That's great, but it doesn't make it true.

[Anonymous No.4591301]

>>4591279

You clearly have no idea what logic is and what it's for.

Also, WLC is not half as impressive as all you fanboys think he is

[Anonymous No.4591307]

He's a charlatan. The only thing worse than a fedora atheist is a fedora theist

[Anonymous No.4591384]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqaHXKLRKzg

1:50

I lost my shit.

I lost my shit.

[Anonymous No.4591431]

Intelligent people are more likely to be correct than stupid people if, and only if, they begin from a position of doubt and then use their intelligence to choose an idea.

If they begin with an idea already chosen, and then use their intelligence to defend it, they may defend it successfully because intelligence lets you out-talk other debaters. But the idea is still likely to be wrong.

Using your intelligence to doubt and correct your own ideas is hard, and feels bad. Using your intelligence to successfully defend your bad ideas is easy, and feels good.

[Anonymous No.4591452]

>>4591431
>If they begin with an idea already chosen, and then use their intelligence to defend it, they may defend it successfully because intelligence lets you out-talk other debaters. But the idea is still likely to be wrong.

I think that this was also a critique of Bertrand Russell on Thomas Aquinas. Basically, ever since Aquinas, religious apologetics have used a method where they start with a conclusion, fix it in advance and then look for anything that verifies this conclusion.

This isn't just used in religion, by the way

[Anonymous No.4591465]

>>4591384
At a minute and fifty seconds in? The undergrad is still introducing it. I didn't catch anything funny there.

[Anonymous No.4591467]

>>4591465
Sorry, I meant an hour and fifty minutes.

[Anonymous No.4591469]

WLC loves to gish gallop

[Anonymous No.4591477]

>>4591384
The dude was obviously trolling/being stoned,
he was right to dismiss him.

[Anonymous No.4591479]

>>4591477
cringed so hard listening to that

[Anonymous No.4591481]

>>4591467
Yeah, I guessed that after I asked, and I heard up to "...and homosexual lovemaking is every bit as beautiful..." and I just couldn't continue.

I wonder if crazy, troll, or gay Christian desperate for his religion to accept him.

[Anonymous No.4591486]

>>4591307
this

[Anonymous No.4591498]

>>4591481
He was trolling, but what exactly is wrong in that statement? On what basis is hetero sex prettier in any way? it's all pretty savage stuff.

[Anonymous No.4591504]

>>4591498
dat anal weepage doe

[Anonymous No.4591511]

>>4591504
Vaginas are pretty nasty things that bleed and have little human beings come from them.
Now I prefer males so you can discredit my opinion if you want, but I see no aesthetic beauty in the vagina beside my instictual lust.

[Anonymous No.4591517]

>>4591511
i be gay too lol
but women are prettier than men

[Anonymous No.4591526]

>>4591517
Citation needed, bro.
The view wasn't shared in all cultures, we just have a good history of fetishizing female curves.

[Anonymous No.4591527]

>>4591452

>This isn't just used in religion, by the way

Oh, of course not, people use it all the time. I catch myself doing it, and have to backtrack. I'm asked a question, my brain throws up an answer, my answer is doubted, I throw my intelligence into gear to defend my answer. It's natural, but it's also dumb, and we all need to try to stop doing it.

It's the basic mistake made by, frankly, a SHITLOAD of philosophers. They have a random notion, and then bring their impressive intelligence to bear to defend and support their precious notion. It's also what an apologia IS, an attempt to defend a conclusion the writer isn't willing to actually question.

Jesuit writings are really interesting, really complex examples of this. Incredibly complex, clever logic, defending and explaining points of doctrine. But because they started from "this doctrine is true, how do I defend it?" rather than "is this doctrine true?" it's all beautiful, elegant bullshit.

[Anonymous No.4591538]

>>4591527
I think the ontological argument is a good basis for a philosophy based on theism, but sure, any religious theology jumps to faith easily.

[Anonymous No.4591543]

>>4591538
>defining god as existing
>god must exist
lel

[Anonymous No.4591547]

>>4591527
>But because they started from "this doctrine is true, how do I defend it?" rather than "is this doctrine true?" it's all beautiful, elegant bullshit.
How's that Russellian account of the Medieval philosophers is treating you?

When are you actually going to engage their arguments? Is "A History of Western Philosophy" your first book ever about philosophy?

[Anonymous No.4591550]

>>4591547
none of aquinas' arguments stand up to scrutiny

[Anonymous No.4591555]

>>4591547
It's actually incredible what a shitty book that is. I see it recommended as the quintessential philosophy intro, and I always try to discourage people from getting it. Russel judges philosophers before he even introduces their arguments, and the whole work feels like high school level criticism aimed at someone who can't even properly refute that criticism, because he's a newbie.

[Anonymous No.4591557]

>>4591547

What are you talking about? This isn't just Russell that has noticed this, this is a fairly common observation that religious apolegetics switch the relationship between data and conclusion. It's fairly common knowledge that you shouldn't start with patterns and project them onto the world, you should start with the world and then extract patterns from it. You should also test whether these patterns are repeatedly consistent

[Anonymous No.4591586]

>>4591538
>>4591543

Yeah, the ontological argument is pure bullshit. And you shouldn't base a philosophy on theism! Stop starting with conclusions!

If you start with "this is true," then you're just building a pretty house of cards on air. Building on certainty feels good, but it's just not effective, and it's probably not philosophy either, if you interpret "love of knowledge" as "desire for knowledge, curiosity."

You can't start with "this is true." You can't start with "god is true" or "the Forms are true" or whatever. You have to start with "I wonder what's true?" This has the added benefit of being the only philosophy that doesn't just give you psychological support, it gives you freakin' superpowers, lets you build airplanes and cure diseases and argue with people thousands of miles away.

[Anonymous No.4591595]

>>4591586
If we accepted no certainty, no philosophical system could ever get off the ground.

[Anonymous No.4591617]

>>4591547

Engage their arguments? What's to freaking engage? Their arguments are often CORRECT. Their "If god, then x" statements are often logically valid. But, you know... "if god."

It's like reading a long engineering manual on the marvellous consequences of elephant shit being an anti-gravity source. The ranches we'd have to set up, with canopies above to catch the floating feces, the beautiful designs for flying machines, the careful calculations of how much and how fresh the poop would need to be for this much weight and fly speed... but elephant shit isn't antigravity, so it's all a bit pointless. Even if the equations are correct, even if the designs are ingenious, that shit don't fly.

[Anonymous No.4591630]

>>4591617
Good, so you're ignorant from the start. Nobody will take you seriously.

[Anonymous No.4591643]

>>4591630

That's a very good refutation, you must be some kind of scholar

[Anonymous No.4591658]

>>4591595

Nonsense. Disregard certainty, utilize probability.

"I cannot truly trust the information received from my senses. I cannot be certain of my memories. Even my internal sense of logic, my gut feeling that 1+1=2, is subject to doubt. So, I could either sit here paralyzed by the uncertainty, or I could use as a working premise the idea that if my senses and memory and logic all agree on something, it's more likely to be true than not. There's no real reason to believe this, but the alternative courses of action are total randomness or inaction, which are boring, so let's do this.

So, where does this take me? I seem to be inhabiting a world with space and time, and some other rules that my memory and senses and logic tell me work reliably, ohh, you can do fun stuff by playing with those. You can throw balls and swim in water and bake bread, cool. And there seem to be other things here that look like me, they talk to me and do things... do they have thoughts too? Well, the noises they make seem to convey ideas, sometimes ideas that weren't in my mind, and my logic says it would be a really unlikely coincidence if they kept doing that WITHOUT having thoughts to do it with, so, they pass a Turing test, I'm probably not alone! Now let's see if we can play with those physical laws and build some scuba gear, I wanna see what's down under the water..."

Starting with doubt takes you to more interesting places than starting with certainty.

[Anonymous No.4591663]

>>4591658
It's obvious you have an agenda to flaunt the scientific method and discredit philosophy.

[Anonymous No.4591669]

>>4591271
Most of his stuff is written for the layman who doesn't have the training but is looking for answers. Sadly this cripples a lot of his arguments similar to what you see in debates where he has to give the dumbed down version instead of going into detail.

Only book of his that I can recommend is "The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge & Human Freedom". Which deals with exactly what it sounds like.

[Anonymous No.4591667]

>>4591663

The scientific method is philosophy.

It's also something that actually works

[Anonymous No.4591782]

This dude thinks he understands special relativity better than physicists and Einstein himself.

He also thinks it's okay to murder children in the name of god, but that we should be very considerate about those poor soldiers who have to do it.

Furthermore, he thinks there are objective moral values. His argument? Because deep down inside, we know it's true. No, really. That's his argument.

This guy is the epitome of intellectual dishonesty. If you actually take him seriously then I hate to break it to you: you're a moron.

[Anonymous No.4591801]

>>4591782

[Anonymous No.4591803]

>>4591669
>The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge & Human Freedom

You know what really grinds my gears about these apologists, regardless of religion? In the beginning of their argument they always say things like "God and free will works together because x and y." And then they write some about it. But what they NEVER do is justify the belief in their particular god. It's like they adjust their definition of god depending on the question and argument made. It's ridiculous, and so blatantly dishonest it's pathetic. How desperate to believe in this stuff do you have to be in order to actually buy all this crap?

[Anonymous No.4591805]

>>4591801
Not even him, but that's a pathetic rebuttal.

[Anonymous No.4591808]

>>4591801

10/10 argument bro really got me there guess what i said was totally wrong.

[Anonymous No.4591827]

>>4591663

No, discrediting philosophy is what you're doing.

Science, or Natural Philosophy as we used to call it, is a branch of philosophy. It's also proof, to all the doubters and haters, that philosophy is actually worthwhile. The search for truth makes progress! It isn't just endless circular arguments, it isn't just undergrads wanking and being euphoric, it really can explain reality and improve people's lives!

Talking about the scientific method as if it was the enemy, rather than philosophy's greatest success, is boneheaded. It's defining philosophy as "euphoric wanking only, no actual progress allowed." If knowledge of Plato's Forms allowed you to actually summon more-perfect objects into existence, would you say that Platonism wasn't philosophy any more?

[Anonymous No.4591849]

Are any of his debates particularly interesting?

I've only seen the Hitchens one which was pretty bad, but that was mostly Hitch's fault.

[Anonymous No.4591851]

>>4591827
Not that anon, but please tell me you're not arguing that other areas of philosophy are bullshit because they haven't managed to invent helicopters and shit with them.

[Anonymous No.4591856]

>>4591498
He was saying God appeared to him and told him that.

[Anonymous No.4591876]

>>4591849
He really believes in eternal life though.
In his view those children that died on earth inherited eternal life in an other world.

[Anonymous No.4591881]

>>4591851

Of course not. I wouldn't say that any more than I'd say building a radiotelescope is a waste of money because we can't immediately make a profit off understanding the universe.

Practical applications aren't the only way an idea can have value. But an idea with practical applications sure as shit has value, and still counts as an idea. A meditation on the nature of human suffering is worthwhile. If it leads to a system of ethics that actually increases people's happiness, then it's even more worthwhile. It's worth knowing, just for the sake of knowledge, how plants grow. If it also lets you breed dwarf wheat and save a billion people from famine, well, give Norman Borlaug a fucking medal.

[Anonymous No.4591887]

>>4591849
>>4591876

It therefore becomes ethical to murder as many children as possible. If they lived, some of them would live sinful lives and go to hell, and all of them would suffer at some point in their lives. Killing them before they have the chance to make the mistake of rejecting god's salvation saves them. You damn yourself, but save many souls in return; it's the good thing to do. And it can't be against god's will, because everything that happens is part of his plan. Get to killin', Craig.

[Anonymous No.4591910]

>>4591279
>>4591282
He actually wins by pre-emptively framing the debate in terms of his five arguments, sometimes in tacit contempt of the format, and then subsequently shifting to any of the five arguments (all requiring complex responses in different domains) his opponent leaves unaddressed, accusing their position as being inadequate.

[Anonymous No.4591965]

>>4591887
No, that's not how that argument works, at all.

[Anonymous No.4592016]

>>4591803
That argument already took place bud, scroll up.

And most theist don't just conclude that there is a God and start working it from there. A lot of it has to do with their own experiences and ways they have interpreted them. There reasoning may be faulty but rarely do I see theistic philosophers or theologians just start "there is a God now lets prove it" instead it's "These ideas I believe point towards a God so lets explore it"

Finally your problem is a bit juvenile. Even if you prescribe to a form of atheism you can view works like this as being thought experiments. While they may be pointless in uncovering some hidden truth about the world and have no basis in reality that does not mean they still can't serve as an exercise and an application of logic to different concepts.

[Anonymous No.4592021]

>>4591805
>>4591808
Well when responding to bullet-ed opinions there really isn't much to say. Especially when said opinions are disingenuous to the actual argument and read as talking points found on any number of atheist blogs.

[Anonymous No.4592025]

>>4591910
This. He takes a shotgun approach where even if his opponent can poke holes ore refute one aspect of the argument he can fall back on the other four.

It's actually quite impressive.

[Anonymous No.4592215]

>>4591271
On Resurrection as history he lost to Ehrman.
On Morality he's lost to Kagan.
On being a Christian in general Parsons handed him his ass entirely.

Thems the food groups right there. And his obnoxious condescending ass is to this day parroting his format and arguments word...for word...for word...

Here's what happens when duking it out with someone trained at his own game (guess which one ended up as a Yale Professor)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebnShlP3jM

[Anonymous No.4592232]

>>4591849
Among my favorites are Parsons, Eddie Tabash, Arif Ahmed, Richard M. Price, and a couple others I listed earlier.

[Anonymous No.4592260]

>>4591527
You've completely missed the point of the Jesuit writings, Aquinas' work, and most apologetics.

Of course they precede from the accepted premise that God exists. They're not, strictly speaking, philosophy, because they don't proceed from a naked search for the truth as philosophy does. They're works of THEOLOGY, and theology by its very nature begins with the assumption that God, or gods, or other otherworldly concepts, exists. Christian theology isn't out to prove God exists, it already accepts as a tautology that God exists, and seeks to spring from that fact to deeper knowledge.

And how does Aquinas know that God exists? Faith. Aquinas includes several proofs of God's existence in the Summa, but it wouldn't be of any less value to Christians if he didn't, because Christians don't need God's existence proven. They know by means apart from reason that God is real.

John Henry Newman has a wonderful essay about this, but I can't remember the name of it right now.

[Anonymous No.4592368]

>>4592215
What happens, exactly? His points are pretty legit - when people claim that we have objective morality that doesn't depend on a source outside of nature, it's easy to refute that. There is no "objective" ideals without those ideals possesing some form of being, we can only have subjective views of good and bad.

[Anonymous No.4592411]

His smugness is a weapon he wields to infuriate his opponents and get them thinking emotionally. Every inch of him is geared towards winning debates. He's a fucking machine. But his arguments are not designed to be used outside of them.

>>4591782
These are also used to infuriate.

>>4591431
Everyone does that. By the time an idea is published the tracks have usually been covered, because the tracks are always ugly and can be attacked easily.

[Anonymous No.4592441]

>>4592368
Watch the full debate. Or did no the concept of harm not occur to you? Fucking aye you theists or whatever you are overthink something so simple.

[Anonymous No.4592485]

>>4591279
>entire 'argument' rests on Appeal to Authority fallacy
>winning debates

[Anonymous No.4592491]

>>4591279

I wouldn't say he wins all his debates. I think Sam Harris pretty much 'won' against him in their Notre Dame debate.

[Anonymous No.4592496]

>>4592441
I didn't watch the debate, though I plan to, people rarely meet Craig on the same terms. But your linking the clip made me think that Craig got refuted in that clip, which I didn't see.

[Anonymous No.4592512]

>>4592496
He got clowned pretty hard, breh.

[Anonymous No.4592514]

>>4591279
Huh? I've seen him in multiple debates, all of which he lost.