Thread by @EveKeneinan

Craig vs Krauss: The Opening Statements


I’m going to give a brief analysis of Craig’s and Krauss’ opening statements, and show that Craig is being philosophical and rational and Krauss is using sophistry.

Craig opens by giving six philosophical arguments for the existence of God.

1 God is the best explanation of the origin of the physical universe (or multiverse). Past atheist have maintained a past eternal universe—but science has shown that to be untenable.

Any expansive universe, such as ours, must have an absolute beginning, as must any multiverse in which it is situated—if we even make such a totally unjustified by evidence speculation, in an attempt to avoid a beginning, and hence a creation—it fails.

So we would be left with an external, transcendent cause of the universe (or multiverse) or Krauss' manifestly irrational "something just pops into being from pure nothingness."

2 Craig next argues that God is the best explanation for "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" (after the famous paper by Eugene Wigner).

That mathematics "fits" nature would have to be a coincidence beyond belief or God made the universe so.

Krauss is going to say "change" "coincidence" "chance" "coincidence" constantly, by the way, in areas where the odds of chance are FAR GREATER than things he routinely bets his life on, like bridges not falling down or airplanes not crashing.

A lot of this debate is going to come down to whether you think "God did x where the odds of x just happening are 1 in 10^100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000" or "x just hit the odds.

3 God is the best explanation for the fine tuning of the universe's physical constants and initial parameters. Krauss is going to LIE about this in a bit (but we'll get there).

4 God is the explanation for objective moral values and duties.

5 The Resurrection of Christ is the best explanation for the historical data surrounding the end of Christ's life, and if Christ was Resurrected, this is evidence for the God that Christ taught.

6 Craig note that this is NOT an argument, but that since God can be personally experienced and known, there is nothing epistemically illicit about holding that God exists as a PROPERLY BASIC BELIEF.

This is of course true. My belief in God is grounded primarily on this.

To anyone who has experienced God, atheism is a rather absurd and frankly silly hypothesis—like one arguing to a Chinese person that China does not exist, because he, personally, has never experienced China. The Chinese person might humor this, but certainly not take it seriously

These are all fairly strong and cogent arguments (or point, in the final case).

Let's see how Krauss does.

Krauss begins with sophistry. He immediately conflates God with a god, and claims there are over 1000 Gods (he uses the capitals here), and makes a "Which God?" argument. This is incoherent, and he knows it is.

I've explained why many times.

Here's me, and David Hart, etc:

So Krauss is engaged in sophistry from the start.

2 His second argument is that God is "irrelevant at best for science." This is a non sequitur. Science uses a naturalistic methodology, and so this simply doesn't and can't speak to the question of God at all.

Here is where he slips in a lie. He says "every species looked like it was fine tuned, but Darwin showed it wasn't" and attempts to draw the conclusion that the fine tuning of the universe can be explained in a similar way.

This is nonsense. Evolution happens WITHIN NATURE, whereas (Craig was careful to note) the FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICAL CONSTANTS and THE INITIAL CONDITIONS OF THE COSMOS cannot be the RESULT of the laws of nature, since they are independent of them and come into being AT THE SAME TIME.

So Krauss is trying to sell a FALSE ANALOGY here, and again, one HE KNOWS IS A FALSE ANALOGY, since Craig already pointed out WHAT MAKES IT FALSE.

You can't appeal to "hidden laws of nature" to "explain" the CREATION of nature.

So far from Krauss, we have

1 A sophism
2 A irrelevant argument, into which he slips a false analogy

and now

3 Krauss now presents the same sophism as 1, again. I have no idea why argument 3 should be the exact same as argument 1 (unless he doesn't have many arguments)

Krauss' 3rd argument is just his 1st argument, the one that mistakenly conflates God with a god. It isn't about the existence of God.

1 there have been many gods, so God doesn't exist
2 science ignores God, so God doesn't exist
3 there have been many gods, so God doesn't exist

4 Krauss trots out the "God of the gaps" argument. Again, evidence of sheer intellectual dishonesty. The "God of the gaps" argument hasn't been made since the 1920s, when it was REJECTED BY CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS AND THEOLOGIANS.

It's an atheistic strawman.

Note the pattern. Craig has made six serious points. Krauss has given a sophism (twice!), an irrelevant argument (with a false analogy), and now a strawman.

Krauss' 5th "argument" is the question-begging "we know more than iron-age peasants."

Krauss's 6th argument is that Jesus is nothing more than a mythological recycling of other deities such as Osiris—which again, is simply and egregiously false, since Jesus is a historical figure. Craig speaks of history; Krauss fears history, so he shifts to mythology.

Argument 7 is very bizarre. Krauss claims that most Christians "don't really believe" in Christian beliefs.

I don't know how he thinks he does or can know this. He thinks Christians don't "really" believe that the Holy Eucharist becomes the Body and Blood of Christ.

I do. Every Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic I know does. Billions of us.

So this "it's so obviously silly that not even believers believe it" isn't much of an argument. It has all the weight of "science believes things so stupid that most scientists don't believe them."

Repeating his "skip" pattern, Krauss' 8th argument is just his 6th argument. Again. Jesus is just a retread of older myths, like Osiris. The Resurrection cannot be "empirically verified" — which doesn't touch Craig's argument to the best explanation.

Next, Krauss appeals to some kind of "personal incredulity" which he disingenuously CALLS "irrationality."

This seems to be a version of "the universe is big (or "old" in this case), so human beings don't matter. So it is irrational to think God exists."

This is of course a string of howling non sequiturs.

"The universe is big (by what standard?); therefore God does not exist (how does this follow?)"

"The universe is old (by what standard); therefore God does not exist (how does this follow?)"

Finally, Krauss is getting desperate, since he moves onto Craig's ground, philosophy, and invokes Hume. He repeats Hume's sophistical argument that any report of a miraculous event should be dismissed because the probably of a lie or error is always greater that a miracle.

So see the problem with Hume's argument, consider it thus:

"It is impossible for anyone to win the lottery, because the probability that you didn't win or misread your ticket is always greater than winning it. So no one can win the lottery."

Next Krauss starts mocking Judaism and Christianity, particularly the Akedah, giving a typically New Atheist childish reading of it.

Again, attacking a cartoon version of something of your own creation is not what honest men do. More strawmen.

Finally, Krauss does the Hitchens' Two-Step (or Three-Step in this case)

1 Science gives us morality
2 Science tells us that morality is evolving and relative and NOT OBJECTIVE, so there isn't any morality
3 Science tells us Christian morality is OBJECTIVELY wrong

The end of Krauss' presentation is pretty disgusting.

It's a personal attack on Dr. Craig, for the sound theological point (which I've been making recently and SHOULDN'T be controversial) that God's actions cannot be judged by human standards.

This is a blatant and disgusting appeal to emotion.

If one remains calm and rational, one can ask "What wrong does God do children by taking them from earthly life into eternal blessedness and everlasting joy?"

None I can see.

THEN Krauss even attempts to go after Dr. Craig's use of syllogistic argument!

He's trying to be funny here.

But of course this is false. The first premise would have to be "All mammal SPECIES" etc. (If that's even true) and Dr. Craig is not a mammal SPECIES.

Fail.

In sum:

Craig made 5 cogent arguments and 1 successful justification of belief in God.

Krauss use sophistry, red herrings, personal attacks, emotional appears, false analogies, and in a few places outright lies and contradictions.

That's the first 45 minutes.

Also Krauss went WAY, WAY over his allotted time, which is another way of cheating.

I don't think any reasonable person can regard Krauss as coming out of this looking GOOD, much less as a "winner."

As the saying goes "If you had to cheat to win, you didn't win."