Hitchens was wildly overrated as a thinker/debater

[Moonjuice]

I'm not a Christian, but I'm going to argue against both you and Hitchens there.

In situations where we don't know whether or not some proposition is true or whether or not some hypothetical being exists, the default position is NOT to "dismiss the claim of its supposed existence" . It's to accept that we simply don't know whether or not it exists.

Hitchens would be well within his rights to say that he isn't personally convinced of the existence of anything supernatural, but if he wants to convince anyone else, whether believer or agnostic, that nothing supernatural exists, then the "burden of proof" is squarely on him to do so.

The "burden of proof" always lies with the one trying to convince somebody else of something. That's just basic rhetoric.

I understand what you are saying, but I disagree. If the claim flies in the face of well understood science (for example), the default position shouldn't be "I don't know". For example, if I say invisible fire breathing dragons the size of elephants exist in my backyard, you are already 99.99% certain I am incorrect. A) There is no evidence of the existence of any fire breathing dragons. B) There is no evidence of any other animals that breath fire. C) There is no evidence that any living animals the size of elephants have the ability to become invisible, or any other animals for that matter. In this example, I believe the default position has to be that they do not exist until sufficient evidence proves otherwise. To say you don't know, would mean you are unaware that fire breathing and invisibility in large animals has never been proven in any way, and that it's just as likely to be true as them not existing.

 

[Rise]

Blah blah blah.
Hiding behind walls of verbiage will not change the fact that your primary form of argumentation is bare assertion.
And Wikipedia, which creationist @Wildswanderer mocks.

Logical fallacies; argument by assertion, appeal to mockery, ad hominem, failure to meet your burden of proof, and failure to meet your burden of rejoinder.

Merely asserting that I have committed any fallacy of assertion doesn't make it true just because you assert it is true.
You cannot quote a single thing in this thread that would be a fallacy of assertion, much less support your claim that you think it's my "primary form" of argument.

This also makes you guilty of an ad hominem because you are using an untrue accusation of fallacious assertation as a way of trying to attack my credibility as way of trying to avoid having to meet your burden of proof or rejoinder in this debate

"blahblahblah" is a base appeal to mockery to distract from the fact that you don't have a logically valid counter argument to offer.

You have failed to meet the burden of proof for your original three claims about Craig's performance in the debate.
And when I pointed out why you had failed to meet your burden of proof, you offered no valid counter argument against that which means you have failed your burden of rejoinder

Going back to what you claimed originally:

Craig? Logic? Craig got demolished when arguing his silly cosmological argument with an actual cosmologist (Sean Carroll). He only impresses those that don't understand or care about the concept of evidence.

You claimed:
1. That Craig’s argument got demolished.
2. That Craig’s argument doesn’t hold up if you understand or care about evidence.
3. And you imply the claim that Craig’s logic is somehow faulty.

None of your claims are ones you can prove with logical arguments.

Therefore you can’t claim your statements are true.

They just represent your unsupported opinion – and can then simply be dismissed as such.

If you are unable to meet your burden of proof and burden of rejoinder then you have conceded you cannot defend your original claims.

Therefore, your original claims were nothing more than your unsubstantiated opinion and not statements of true fact.

Waiting for your SCIENTIFIC response here:

Evolution has been observed... right?

Logical fallacies; "red herring" and "avoiding the issue".

The thread you are linking to has no relevance to defending your original claims in this thread.

It is evident that because you cannot defend your claims that you are trying to change the topic to distract from your inability to defend your claims with valid logic.

They are empirical ones, which trumps this sad reliance on labeling everything a logical fallacy which you employ. Along with bare assertions.

Logical fallacy; argument by assertion.

You did not provide any logical argument to establish why we should believe any one of your original three claims should be regarded as true.

You cannot quote a single valid argument you have given in support of them.

Merely asserting that you have, and asserting that they are "empirical" and that they "trump" mine, doesn't make your claim true just because you assert it is so. You have listed none of the arguments you supposedly made nor given any logical reasons why they would "trump" anything I have argued.

Merely asserting that I have only made bare assertions doesn't make it true just because you assert it is. You cannot quote any argument I made in this thread as proof of your claim.

reliance on labeling everything a logical fallacy which you employ

You have not shown why any fallacy I have pointed out about your post would be in error in any way.

If my post only involved pointing out the fallacies you commit, and I am not wrong in identifying them as fallacies, then that would mean logically that your posts have contained nothing but logical fallacies. In that case you never made a valid argument to begin with, so there was nothing else to respond to but to point out why your "arguments" were fallacious.

If I am correct in pointing out the fallacies in your post, then you are the one who bears the responsibility for committing the fallacies and therefore bears the responsibility for fixing your arguments so they become valid and true.

Otherwise your argument is invalid and you lose the debate by consequence of not being able to offer a valid defense of your claims.

Given that you have not and cannot refute that you committed those fallacies, we can conclude I am not in error for pointing out that your logic is invalid and that you failed to address the issue being debated.

If you think I am somehow wrong for calling out your fallacious "arguments" for what they are, even though you don't dispute that I am correct, then that implies you think you are entitled to make fallacious invalid arguments and have them be treated as legitimate logical arguments with true conclusions. But you don't stop committing fallacious arguments just becomes someone stops pointing out that your arguments are fallacious.

So, if that's the case, it raises several salient questions about your worldview:
Why do you feel entitled to use fallacious logic in defense of your claims?
Why do you feel entitled to not have to meet the burden of proof for your claims?
Why do you feel entitled to not have to offer a counter argument in defense of your claims when it has been refuted?

I thought we were people of science and logic here?
Why do you think you get to spew illogical arguments and unsupported opinions around without being able to logically defend why you think your conclusions are true?

 

[Rise]

Yes, I realize he says that repeatedly during his speeches, but he never ever gets to demonstrating the existence of any god(s), never mind the personal god he believes in.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.

I already pointed out that the teleological and moral arguments require us to believe in the attributes of a creator which is consistent with what we see in Abrahamic beliefs.

What I said:

It is the teleological argument which establishes that there must be a creator by showing design and intention behind design in the universe.

So far this gets us to the conclusion of an eternal uncaused free will being of unfathomable power who by his power and will of intention created the universe and all in it.

Right there you've already narrowed down the potential deities this can describe to a considerable degree as they don't fit these attributes. Its pretty much going to come down to Abrahamic religions at that point.

But then you get to the moral arguments and self evident arguments which establish the moral character of this creator being and what his intention was for his creation.
That further narrows down the compatibility with various religious beliefs.

You haven't refuted that, but merely repeated your original claim.
But repeating it doesn't make it true just because you repeat it.

that doesn't mean the cause is the Christian God that WLC personally believes in. The "cause" could be invisible farting pixies. There's nothing to indicate the cause has to be some intelligent entity.

...

Unintelligent universe farting pixies could be inserted into his equation just as easily. Or the unintelligent universe-vomiting turtle from Stephen King’s “It.”

...

Anyone can do that when they do as WLC does and just inserts his personal god into it without demonstration of said god's existence. How convenient.

...

“Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence.”

Hmm, okay. So that cause just has to be an intelligent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc., etc. creator? When did he get anywhere close to demonstrating that?

Your statement says more about your poor understanding of the issues involved than it does about the quality of Craig's arguments.

Based on our uniform and repeated experience in scientific observation we know the following:
1. Information/code/language only originates from a mind.
2. Engineering/fine tuning only originates from a mind acting upon the world.

There is no evidence in observable reality that such things ever arise by random chance.

If you find a coding language in DNA and evidence of fine tuning in the universe then the only conclusion our scientific experience allows us to logically conclude is that a mind created the coding information and engineered the parameters we see.

That right there gets you to conclude the cause of the universe was an intelligent creator without even having to get into the moral argument which provides even more information about our creator.

Even if the universe (our universe? the cosmos? He never distinguishes between the two, rather he just lumps them together)

...
“The universe began to exist.”

The entire cosmos? Our local universe? Cosmologists don’t even know the actual answer to that yet, but WLC does somehow?

Logical fallacy, irrelevant conclusion.
You have given no logical reason why it would matter which he was talking about.

It doesn't matter if you push the beginning point back from the big bang to the beginning of some prior quantum universe - you still end up with the same problem of how you get something from nothing.

came into existence and requires a cause (which he never demonstrates either),

When you say "demonstrate" I assume you are not trying to accuse Craig of having no arguments to support his conclusions that the universe had a beginning and that logically a beginning requires a cause.

But instead I assume you are trying to claim that you think Craig's arguments failed to in some way to sufficiently establish his conclusion.

In the case of the later, you are merely committing a logical fallacy of argument by assertion.
You have given no reasons why we should believe there is an fault in any of Craig's arguments.
Merely asserting that they failed doesn't make your claim true just because you assert it is so.

The onus is on you as the one making the claim to give logical reasons why your claim is true.

As Sean Carroll points out to him in another debate, there are many different cosmological explanations in which the universe has no beginning.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
You cannot point to a single model Carroll talked about and give logical reasons why it would allow for a universe without a beginning without having some fatal flaw in the model that invalidates it.

You are committing the same fallacy @Justanatheist did by merely repeating Carroll's conclusions and asserting Carroll's conclusion must be assumed to be right without giving us any of the actual reasons or arguments for why we should believe Carroll's conclusion is right.

You don't understand the issue well enough to do that - so you're not in any position to start proclaiming that Carroll's conclusion was correct. To do is just a fallacy argument by assertion that is likely coming out of a fallacious appeal to authority (You're likely just assuming what Carroll concluded was correct, without understanding why it would be correct, just because you think he is an authority that can proclaim what is true and should just be believed on faith).

WLC does nothing to address them and simply brushes them off as though they don't exist.

You are falsely claiming Craig had no valid counter arguments but committed the fallacy of handwaving or avoiding the issue. Your claim is demonstrably false.

All I need to do in order to disprove your claim is to give one example of one valid counter argument Craig gave against alternative models and ideas.

Example: Craig showed the logical contradiction of beliefs that assert something could come from nothing by pointing out that to assert that would require abandoning every presupposition that science is based upon and require us to admit that nothing is actually knowable. Which undermines the very attempts by science to understand how the universe works.
Because if something can come from nothing, without any force of cause behind it, then the universe is not governed by the laws of physics, those laws are not predictable, they are not uniform, and there is no restraint on "nothing" from doing absolutely anything at any time for no reason whatsoever.
If our universe could come into being from nothing then it could just as easily be demolished by the creation of something new, or simply an uncreation of what was already created, without warning or reason by the same capricious nothingness that has no cause or constraint on what it does or why.

Not only is such an idea without evidence and completely inconsistent with what we observe to be true about reality, but believing that is true would require us to reject the very scientific method we are trying to use to show it is true - which is ultimately a self defeating position because you can't claim anything about how the universe works if something can happen from nothing without reason. If that can happen then nothing can truly be explained by the scientific method because nothing can be trusted to be repeatable or verifiable because it could all just change at a moment's notice without cause.

If the laws of our universe can pop into being out of nothing and without cause then we have no reason not to believe those same laws could just as easily be abolished or changed without warning or cause - so there's nothing you can conclude to be true about anything because you don't know from one moment to the next if what use to be impossible (according to prior observations) will not suddenly be possible, or vise versa.

He never manages to actually demonstrate that either.

...

It doesn't though. This is just asserted but never demonstrated.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
Merely asserting that Craig's teleological argument failed to logically establish it's conclusion doesn't make your claim true just because you assert it is so.

You are required to give actual logical reasons why you think you can claim his arguments were insufficient to logically prove his conclusion before you try to claim your assertion is true.

 

[Rise]

And the argument that the universe is fine tuned for life is absurd to me.

Logical fallacy, "appeal to the stone" or "appeal to personal incredulity".

Calling an argument absurd doesn't prove there is any fault with it's logic or evidence just because you call it names.

And saying you don't understand an argument doesn't prove there is any fault with it's logic or evidence just because you don't understand it.

You cannot point to any logical fault with Craig's argument and explain why there would supposedly be any specific flaw in his argument.

I find his moral arguments to be unconvincing

Logical fallacy, "hitchens fallacy".

Whether or not you are persuaded to change your mind based on an argument is not relevant to disputing the validity of the argument or the truth of it's conclusion.

Something can be logically proven true, and be true, even if you choose not to believe it. Your personal level of persuasion about about something doesn't determine whether or not it's logically proven to be true.

and I don't see how it establishes anything about a being WLC cannot actually demonstrate the existence of in the first place.

Logical fallacy, "appeal to personal incredulity".

Your inability to understand how the argument from morality establishes anything to be true about the creator doesn't mean the arguments are invalid or that the conclusion is false.


Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
Merely asserting that Craig failed to logically demonstrate the existence of a creator being doesn't make your assertion true just because you assert it is so.

You have no found any specific fault with any specific argument Craig gave in support of his conclusion.

Another poster aptly addressed the supposed "self evident arguments" which are merely asserted to be "self-evident" but never demonstrated as such, so I'm not going to get further into that.

And logical fallacy, "argument by assertion".
You have not quoted any specific argument and explained logically why it would refute anything I have argued nor why it would support anything you are trying to argue.

Merely asserting your claim is true doesn't prove your claim is true just because you assert it is so.

That would be WLC's fallacy, actually. He does a whole lot of asserting.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.

You cannot point to a single argument Craig gave that would constitute the fallacy of argument by assertion.
Much less could you point to a multitude of them to prove your claim that he does it "a whole lot".

Merely asserting he does it doesn't make it true just because you assert it is so.

The burden of proof is on you as the one making the claim to provide supporting arguments and evidence for your claim.

Well when that's what he's actually done, I'm going to go ahead and point it out. His conclusion doesn't follow from his premises, and not only that, he can't demonstrate that his premises are true to begin with.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.

Merely repeating your fallacy of assertion that Craig's arguments were faulty or insufficient doesn't make your fallacious assetion stop being fallacious just because you repeat it.

You cannot prove your claims are true by showing logically why there is any specific fault in any specific argument Craig made.

He can’t even demonstrate that his very first premise is true. He just declares it so.

Logical fallacy, strawman.

You are misrepresenting Craig's argument by claiming he offered no arguments in support of his premise that the universe began to exist.
You are ignoring all the logical reasons and evidence he presented for supporting his conclusion that the universe began to exist.

All I have to do to disprove your claim is give only one example of an argument or piece of evidence Craig gave in support of his premise.

Example: The 2nd law of thermodynamics is evidence that the universe can't be eternal.

So your claim that Craig offered no arguments in support of his premise is obviously false.

If you want to try to dispute Craig's arguments in support of his premise then you need to show why any of them are in fault - you can't get around that by fallaciously trying to pretend he never actually made any arguments.

“Everything that begins to exist has a cause.”

When did he demonstrate that?

It's a logical truth we observe about reality. Can you name anything that has begun to exist that did not have a cause?
If the answer is "no" then the premise is sound.

The entire cosmos? Our local universe? Cosmologists don’t even know the actual answer to that yet, but WLC does somehow?

You don't understand the nature of the argument taking place and as a result end up making a fallacious argument.

Craig argues that all the evidence we currently have, and based off everything we currently know about reality, that we would be forced to conclude the universe has a beginning.


Just because some cosmologists choose to believe that we may eventually find an answer for how the universe could be eternal doesn't mean that is where the evidence is actually pointing to the possibility that the universe could be eternal.

It is fallacious then to point to a cosmologists's personal belief about what he one day expects or hopes to find and then try to claim that belief means we can't logically conclude based on the current evidence that the universe had to have a beginning.

An analogy: An astronomer could say he believes one day we will come up with a model that explains why the sun actually revolves around the earth. Even though all the evidence and observations we have point to the fact that the earth revolves around the sun.
His personal belief about what he one day wants to find doesn't change the fact of what the evidence currently shows us is true.

Craig is making an argument based on what the evidence is actually currently showing.

He gets a ton of science wrong, which is obvious when he debates scientists like Sean Carroll. He even got Carroll’s views wrong, misquotes him out of context to make it seem he was saying something he wasn’t, and when corrected by Carroll himself, simply continues to inaccurately describe Carroll’s views! WLC is at least 20 years behind on the science he cites.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
You have given no supporting evidence or logical arguments to establish why we should believe your assertions are true.

You have made the following unsupported assertions:
1. That Craig gets science wrong.
2. That Craig gets a "ton" of the science wrong.
3. That it's obvious Craig gets a ton of science wrong.
4. That Craig got Carroll's views wrong.
5. That Craig misquotes Carroll.
6. That Craig takes Carroll out of context.
7. That Craig strawmanned Carroll's arguments or conclusions.
8. That Craig committed the fallacy of repetition by not giving a counter argument to something that was supposedly refuted.
9. That Craig's science is outdated.

You can't give a single supporting piece of evidence or logic to establish why any of your claims should be regarded as true.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.

I already pointed out that the teleological and moral arguments require us to believe in the attributes of a creator which is consistent with what we see in Abrahamic beliefs.

They actually don't, despite your repeated assertions to the contrary.

WLC never gets to demonstrating the existence of any god(s), never mind the personal god he believes in. He simply leaps to that conclusion because that's the predetermined conclusion he simply has to jump to.

I don't care if you think that's a logical fallacy. It's the reality of the situation, either way.

"Conversations" like this will never get anywhere, because they're designed to obfuscate the fact that logical arguments don't prove or demonstrate the existence of God(s) or anything else. Try some empirical evidence some time instead of the most boring "conversation" known to man. A "conversation" which goes absolutely no where.

What I said:


You haven't refuted that, but merely repeated your original claim.
But repeating it doesn't make it true just because you repeat it.



Your statement says more about your poor understanding of the issues involved than it does about the quality of Craig's arguments.

Based on our uniform and repeated experience in scientific observation we know the following:
1. Information/code/language only originates from a mind.
2. Engineering/fine tuning only originates from a mind acting upon the world.

There is no evidence in observable reality that such things ever arise by random chance.

If you find a coding language in DNA and evidence of fine tuning in the universe then the only conclusion our scientific experience allows us to logically conclude is that a mind created the coding information and engineered the parameters we see.

That right there gets you to conclude the cause of the universe was an intelligent creator without even having to get into the moral argument which provides even more information about our creator.




Logical fallacy, irrelevant conclusion.
You have given no logical reason why it would matter which he was talking about.

It doesn't matter if you push the beginning point back from the big bang to the beginning of some prior quantum universe - you still end up with the same problem of how you get something from nothing.



When you say "demonstrate" I assume you are not trying to accuse Craig of having no arguments to support his conclusions that the universe had a beginning and that logically a beginning requires a cause.

But instead I assume you are trying to claim that you think Craig's arguments failed to in some way to sufficiently establish his conclusion.

In the case of the later, you are merely committing a logical fallacy of argument by assertion.
You have given no reasons why we should believe there is an fault in any of Craig's arguments.
Merely asserting that they failed doesn't make your claim true just because you assert it is so.

The onus is on you as the one making the claim to give logical reasons why your claim is true.



Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
You cannot point to a single model Carroll talked about and give logical reasons why it would allow for a universe without a beginning without having some fatal flaw in the model that invalidates it.

You are committing the same fallacy @Justanatheist did by merely repeating Carroll's conclusions and asserting Carroll's conclusion must be assumed to be right without giving us any of the actual reasons or arguments for why we should believe Carroll's conclusion is right.

You don't understand the issue well enough to do that - so you're not in any position to start proclaiming that Carroll's conclusion was correct. To do is just a fallacy argument by assertion that is likely coming out of a fallacious appeal to authority (You're likely just assuming what Carroll concluded was correct, without understanding why it would be correct, just because you think he is an authority that can proclaim what is true and should just be believed on faith).



You are falsely claiming Craig had no valid counter arguments but committed the fallacy of handwaving or avoiding the issue. Your claim is demonstrably false.

All I need to do in order to disprove your claim is to give one example of one valid counter argument Craig gave against alternative models and ideas.

Example: Craig showed the logical contradiction of beliefs that assert something could come from nothing by pointing out that to assert that would require abandoning every presupposition that science is based upon and require us to admit that nothing is actually knowable. Which undermines the very attempts by science to understand how the universe works.
Because if something can come from nothing, without any force of cause behind it, then the universe is not governed by the laws of physics, those laws are not predictable, they are not uniform, and there is no restraint on "nothing" from doing absolutely anything at any time for no reason whatsoever.
If our universe could come into being from nothing then it could just as easily be demolished by the creation of something new, or simply an uncreation of what was already created, without warning or reason by the same capricious nothingness that has no cause or constraint on what it does or why.

Not only is such an idea without evidence and completely inconsistent with what we observe to be true about reality, but believing that is true would require us to reject the very scientific method we are trying to use to show it is true - which is ultimately a self defeating position because you can't claim anything about how the universe works if something can happen from nothing without reason. If that can happen then nothing can truly be explained by the scientific method because nothing can be trusted to be repeatable or verifiable because it could all just change at a moment's notice without cause.

If the laws of our universe can pop into being out of nothing and without cause then we have no reason not to believe those same laws could just as easily be abolished or changed without warning or cause - so there's nothing you can conclude to be true about anything because you don't know from one moment to the next if what use to be impossible (according to prior observations) will not suddenly be possible, or vise versa.




Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
Merely asserting that Craig's teleological argument failed to logically establish it's conclusion doesn't make your claim true just because you assert it is so.

You are required to give actual logical reasons why you think you can claim his arguments were insufficient to logically prove his conclusion before you try to claim your assertion is true.

 

[Rise]

They actually don't, despite your repeated assertions to the contrary.

...

WLC never gets to demonstrating the existence of any god(s), never mind the personal god he believes in. He simply leaps to that conclusion because that's the predetermined conclusion he simply has to jump to.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.
I have already refuted your claims with my previous arguments and you have offered no attempt at giving a valid counter argument.
Your arguments don't stop being refuted just because you repeat them.

I don't care if you think that's a logical fallacy. It's the reality of the situation, either way.

There are two fatal flaws with your statement:

1. It's not a matter of opinion that you are committing logical fallacies instead of offering valid logical arguments, but a statement of logical fact that you cannot refute. You cannot show any error with me calling out any of your fallacies for what they are. And if the are not in error then the responsibility is yours to correct your arguments to become valid or to concede you have no valid counter argument.

2. Logical fallacy, failure of the burden of rejoinder, and argument by repetition.

Merely repeating your refuted claims don't make them true just because you repeat it.

And your unwillingness/inability to offer a valid counter argument means you have failed your burden of rejoinder, which means you tacitly concede the debate by being unwilling to meet the basic conditions of having a debate.

"Conversations" like this will never get anywhere,

...

A "conversation" which goes absolutely no where

If you can't make a valid counter argument to defend your original claims then you are correct - your claim will go nowhere because it has been refuted and it will stand refuted.

Why do you feel entitled to have your baseless opinion go somewhere when it was proven false and based on fallacious reasoning to begin with?

Why do you feel entitled to make fallacious arguments and then have them be treated as legitimate valid logical arguments?

because they're designed to obfuscate the fact that logical arguments don't prove or demonstrate the existence of God(s) or anything else.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.

You haven't even been able to show any flaw in Craig's logical arguments for demonstrating God's existence, much less provided any logical arguments for why you think you can claim God can't be demonstrated with logic.

It's not true just because you assert it is. You need logical arguments and evidence to prove your claim is true.

Try some empirical evidence some time

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
Merely claiming that mine or Craigs arguments lack sufficient evidence is not true just because you claim it is.
You have given no evidence or logical reasoning to establish why your claim should be regarded as true.

instead of the most boring "conversation" known to man. e.

Logical fallacy, "appeal to boredom".
Your level of interest has no relevance to defending your original claims nor refuting my arguments.
Your arguments stand refuted.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I rest my case.
I'm going to slip into a coma now.

 

[tas8831]

Logical fallacies; argument by assertion, appeal to mockery, ad hominem, failure to meet your burden of proof, and failure to meet your burden of rejoinder.

Merely asserting that I have committed any fallacy of assertion doesn't make it true just because you assert it is true.
Projection. Failure to admit own shortcomings. Hiding behind=f wall of nonsense.

You cannot quote a single thing in this thread that would be a fallacy of assertion, much less support your claim that you think it's my "primary form" of argument.

"I believe such a singularity event would be compatible with the Genesis account of creation."

You are so boring. Pity you have nothing but assertions and whining.

 

[ecco]

This exposes the root of what I have noticed with most militant atheists - their objection to God is not based on logic, but anger. Anger at God. They don’t want to believe He is real, not because the evidence is in their favor but because they don’t like Him or don’t like the implications of His reality being true.

I guess I'm not a militant atheist. Gods are the creation of man's imaginings. The only thing to be angry about is what believers do and have done in the name of their god.

Without even needing to get into the arguments about self evident experience and the historicity of the New Testament as evidence for Christianity...

"Historicity of the New Testament"? When was that established?

 

[Rise]

I guess I'm not a militant atheist. Gods are the creation of man's imaginings. The only thing to be angry about is what believers do and have done in the name of their god.

Someone else in this thread said the same thing, but when we probed deeper the latent anger and resentment they had at the idea of the Biblical God started to bubble out.

I'm not saying that would necessarily be the case with you. But I am saying you'd be surprised how people are capable of hiding from themselves what they really believe and feel. The Bible tells us people do this as well, that God has put the truth inside each person but they suppress it because they want to engage in immorality. Romans 1.

Hitchens also claims the same thing you do - but his anger and resentment at the idea of God should be apparent in his emotions. It's certainly apparent in the types of ad hominem arguments he uses against the character of God.

Its a lot easier for one to lie themselves about God's existence if they pretend they're not angry at God. Admitting one is angry at the idea of God implies one must think he really exists.

"Historicity of the New Testament"? When was that established?

I didn't say Craig established it. I said he argued for it.
Craig made arguments about why we can believe the resurrection happened based on appealing to evidence and logic for the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts.

I don't think it's the most effective way to argue for the truth of Christianity over other forms of theism - which is why I don't seek to defend his argument for Christianity using that method exclusively.

With regards to this specific debate, it doesn't end up being a problem for Craig because hitchens has no refutation for Craig's first three arguments that establish general theism.
So if Craig has proven general theism better explains the world than atheism, then we are forced to leave the debate concluding that the Christian God is more likely to be true than no God because we already know based on the first three arguments that atheism can't explain reality but theism can. And since Christianity believes in God then it automatically is more likely to be right than atheism.

 

[ecco]

Someone else in this thread said the same thing, but when we probed deeper the latent anger and resentment they had at the idea of the Biblical God started to bubble out.

I'm not saying that would necessarily be the case with you. But I am saying you'd be surprised how people are capable of hiding from themselves what they really believe and feel.

Hmm, not the case with me, BUT...

Just an assertion of what another atheist did when you probed. OK, go ahead and probe. Do you think I'll say your immoral god intentionally set Adam & Eve up to fail? Do you think I'll say your holy ghost raped a young virgin. Do you think I'll criticize your immoral god for telling Moses to divide up the loot and pass out the young virgins to his victorious armies?

Those aren't my ideas of your biblical god, those are the ideas presented in your holy scriptures. Those are the actions that you folks believe and most of you condone.

Does that make me angry at your god? No, of course not. I don't get mad at Santa for not giving me a new Porsche.

What makes me angry is that beliefs in this stuff lead people to do evil things like justifying the ownership of slaves.

 

[ecco]

The Bible tells us people do this as well, that God has put the truth inside each person but they suppress it because they want to engage in immorality. Romans 1.

Your bible is filled with incidents of immorality.
Job offering his daughters to be raped by a mob so he could gain favor with his boozed-up fantasy angels.
Your holy ghost raping virgin Mary.
Killing all the young innocent children in a horrendous flood because he didn't like the way his creation turned out. Do I really need to remind you that your omniscient god knew he was going to do this long before he created A&E but went ahead with his flawed creation anyway.

 

[ecco]

"Historicity of the New Testament"? When was that established?

I didn't say Craig established it. I said he argued for it.
Craig made arguments about why we can believe the resurrection happened based on appealing to evidence and logic for the historical reliability of the Gospel accounts.

Craig, shmaig. Who established the "Historicity of the New Testament". You made the statement it was established. Was that just your opinion?

 

[ecco]

then we are forced to leave the debate concluding that the Christian God is more likely to be true than no God because we already know based on the first three arguments that atheism can't explain reality but theism can.

Instead of relying on a video, why don't you present arguments that "the Christian God is more likely to be true than no God". If you want to parrot Craig, go ahead.

For starters, you could explain why, of all the gods created by the imaginings of man, only your Christian god is real.

Your beliefs:
Zeus - man-made
Shiva - man-made
Bumba - man-made
Jehova - real
Altjira - man-made
Odin - man-made
Glooskap - man-made
Ra - man-made

And since Christianity believes in God then it automatically is more likely to be right than atheism.

Ya gotta love the logic of the apologist. Ya got anything to back up that assertion?

 

[Rise]

There's no reason for you respond to one small post with four short posts in a row.
Exercise some patience and think about what you're doing before you type so you can put them all in the same post.

Craig, shmaig. Who established the "Historicity of the New Testament". You made the statement it was established. Was that just your opinion?

Logical fallacy, strawman.
You cannot quote anywhere that I said such a thing in this thread.

Just an assertion of what another atheist did when you probed.

It wasn't just an assertion but a truthful statement of what happened.
Post #144.

OK, go ahead and probe.

Why would I?
I am not required to prove you feel any particular way in order to prove any conclusion I have made in this thread.

Do you think I'll say your immoral god

As a philosophical materialist, you have no basis from which to accuse God of being immoral.

Where is your objective standard of morality coming from which you can use to objectively claim god is supposedly immoral?

If all you have is your subjective opinion then you can't logically accuse God of actually being immoral because true morality requires an objective definition of "how things are suppose to be" when compared with "how things actually are".

Instead of relying on a video, why don't you present arguments that "the Christian God is more likely to be true than no God". If you want to parrot Craig, go ahead.

Logical fallacy, strawman.

I never posted this thread to have Craig's video argue on my behalf. I posted it to comment on Hitchen's failure in the debate.

You are the one who is trying to argue with Craig over the New Testament as a historical document.

Ya gotta love the logic of the apologist. Ya got anything to back up that assertion?

The support for my conclusion was the logical reasons I already gave for why we would reach that conclusion.

Since you didn't understand the logic the first time, I will try to repeat it for you in a different way:

X = Theism.
Y = Christianity
Z = Atheism

Craig is arguing for X+Y being true. X being true by itself would make Z untrue.
Hitchens is arguing for X and Y being untrue, and X being untrue would make Z true.

If Craig proves that X is true, but fails to conclusively demonstrate that Y is true, then Z is still untrue.

If Hitchens can't disprove X then he can't claim Z is true. And if he fails to disprove Y outright, then he can't claim Y has no chance of being true either.

Logically, if theism is proven to be true, and atheism proven to be untrue, then Christianity logically has a chance of being the right worldview while atheism has zero chance of being the right worldview.

Therefore, logically, Christianity is more likely to be true than atheism because atheism has been proven to be untrue.

Which is why Hitchens comes out the loser if he can't refute the arguments for general theism.

You're forced to conclude that Christianity at least has a chance of being true while atheism has no chance.

 

[ecco]

There's no reason for you respond to one small post with four short posts in a row.
Exercise some patience and think about what you're doing before you type so you can put them all in the same post.

I do that so as not to confuse the person I'm responding to. Some people can handle multiple tracks in one post, some cannot. I try to choose carefully based on past experience.

 

[ecco]

Craig, shmaig. Who established the "Historicity of the New Testament". You made the statement it was established. Was that just your opinion?

Logical fallacy, strawman.
You cannot quote anywhere that I said such a thing in this thread.

Well, there you go again with trying to duck and dodge by (mis)using logic arguments instead of trying to actually have a discussion.

Nevertherless, you posted this.

Without even needing to get into the arguments about self evident experience and the historicity of the New Testament as evidence for Christianity specifically...

So, it's not a "Logical fallacy, strawman." And I could and did quote where you said such a thing in this thread.


Would you care to answer the question now or are you going to try to duck and dodge again?






I'll skip the rest of your post #275. Perhaps it will help you remember what you posted if we just do one topic at a time.

 

[Rise]

Well, there you go again with trying to duck and dodge by (mis)using logic arguments instead of trying to actually have a discussion.

Logical fallacy, "argument by assertion".
Merely asserting that I have dodged anything or misused logic doesn't make your claim true just because you assert it so.
You can give no logical reasons or evidence to prove your claim is true.

​

So, it's not a "Logical fallacy, strawman." And I could and did quote where you said such a thing in this thread.

You just refuted your own claim by what you quoted.

You said:

Craig, shmaig. Who established the "Historicity of the New Testament". You made the statement it was established. Was that just your opinion?

I said (And let's quote the whole context here, which you failed to do):

Without even needing to get into the arguments about self evident experience and the historicity of the New Testament as evidence for Christianity specifically, Craig has already logically dismantled the entire platform upon which Hitchens worldview rests. And with that being done, Hitchens has no basis from which to attack theism as untrue. Nor does his undermined platform even get him a reasonable basis from which to attack Christianity specifically as an untrue type of theism.

You claimed I said Craig "established" the historicity of the New Testament.
But I said no such thing in what you are quoting.

I said that it was not even necessary for Craig to establish the historicity of the New Testament in order to disprove Hitchens' position of atheism if he has already proven the first three arguments are true and they go unrefuted by Hitchens.

There is nothing in my statement that claims Craig did establish the historicity of the New Testament. Nothing in my statement even implies or assumes he did. It says simply that it would not be necessary for him to even do so.

Would you care to answer the question now or are you going to try to duck and dodge again?

I'll skip the rest of your post #275. Perhaps it will help you remember what you posted if we just do one topic at a time.

I have therefore above proved you were wrong to falsely claim I was dodging anything. You simply had poor reading comprehension and didn't listen to the first time I tried to point out why you were wrong.

I do that so as not to confuse the person I'm responding to. Some people can handle multiple tracks in one post, some cannot. I try to choose carefully based on past experience.

Your judgement of what people can handle is as poor as your reading comprehension.

Your posts aren't so important that you need to give each point it's own post. You are not being considerate of the other posters who read and respond to threads when you splay your posts all over the page unnecessarily.

 

[tas8831]

Craig, shmaig. Who established the "Historicity of the New Testament". You made the statement it was established. Was that just your opinion?

Almost as if Johnny Logic can't provide a simple, straightforward answer to a direct, simple question.
Honesty, integrity, and relevant/valid evidence trumps phony 'logic' claims all day. And we see where the bible defender lands on the issue.

 

[tas8831]

And since Christianity believes in God then it automatically is more likely to be right than atheism.

Wow...
Talk about crappy "logic."

No actual evidence, just dopey claims of 'logic' produce absurd conclusions like that.

Go back to your appeal to false authority and false claims of 'logical fallacies' to prop up your failing beliefs.

I do hope you will one day address your rather naïve take on genetics, but I'm starting to lose hope...