Catholics and William Lane Craig

[ronnie_bonigli]

Argumentum ad numeram.

It’s always telling when you point out where someone was totally misguided in their response, i.e. “There is a world of difference. We directly experience the external reality, via our senses”, whether they are willing to admit it on not. I’ve noticed that a couple of the atheists on this forum are beyond admitting their errors, their conceit will not allow for such behavior.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

spock

*Argumentum ad numeram. *

The argument is not confined to theists. Scientists use it all the time to affirm the authenticity of a scientific idea. When the entire scientific community accepts the Big Bang or Evolution, then they become respectable ideas. But when virtually the entire human race from the dawn of history has searched for God in one form or another, it’s just an illusion?

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

spock

*Argumentum ad numeram. *

The argument is not confined to theists. Scientists use it all the time to affirm the authenticity of a scientific idea. When the entire scientific community accepts the Big Bang or Evolution, then they become respectable ideas. But when virtually the entire human race from the dawn of history has searched for God in one form or another, it’s just an illusion?

I’m of the Alvin Plantinga school, belief in God is a properly basic belief, a foundational knowledge. It’s the reason why even many atheists suddenly find themselves praying to God in the middle of a really bad plane flight through a storm.

 

[Spock]

The argument is not confined to theists. Scientists use it all the time to affirm the authenticity of a scientific idea. When the entire scientific community accepts the Big Bang or Evolution, then they become respectable ideas.

You are mistaken. If those are respected ideas it is not because many scientists “think so”. It is because they are internally robust, consistent, and allow us to make testable predictions. They may be respected ideas, until a new insight occurs. And then all the “respect” is gone; a new theory comes along, which will be “respected” as long as there is no better one presented. There are no dogmas in science.

But when virtually the entire human race from the dawn of history has searched for God in one form or another, it’s just an illusion?

They certainly “searched” and so far found nothing. The point is that the sheer number of people who believe that a propostion is true is not indicative to the validity of that proposition.

An old poster comes to my mind. On the poster there was a beautifully laid table, with china plates, silverware and crystal glasses. On the plate there was a steaming pile of substance (the name of which is not to be mentioned in polite company) and the caption ran: “One hundred billion flies can’t all be wrong! Why don’t you taste it, too?”. This is the argumentum of numeram.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

spock

The point is that the sheer number of people who believe that a propostion is true is not indicative to the validity of that proposition.

Nor is it indicative that the proposition is delusional. One scientist may be right and all the others may be wrong, but it was certainly in Einstein’s favor that other scientists confirmed his thought.

If one person was right about believing in God, and everyone else said he was wrong, I think you’d be singing a different tune. You’d be on the side that said he was delusional and needed to be locked up for singing loony tunes.

 

[Spock]

Nor is it indicative that the proposition is delusional.

Right. It is not indicative of anything. But you guys keep on bringing up the same argumentum ad numeram, not I. Maybe after this little exchange you will stop it. One can only hope.

 

[Spock]

Nor is it indicative that the proposition is delusional.

Right. It is not indicative of anything. But you guys keep on bringing up the same argumentum ad numeram, not I. Maybe after this little exchange you will stop it. One can only hope.

If one person was right about believing in God, and everyone else said he was wrong, I think you’d be singing a different tune. You’d be on the side that said he was delusional and needed to be locked up for singing loony tunes.

Your “predictive” power is failing. It would not matter if it were one person, or 100 million. I would ask the same thing: “where is the evidence?”.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

spock

*Right. It is not indicative of anything. But you guys keep on bringing up the same argumentum ad numeram, not I. Maybe after this little exchange you will stop it. One can only hope. *

“It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinions.” Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was not, as you put, one of “you guys,” but he believed very much in the existence of God and found solace in recognizing that his belief was the belief of nearly the entire human race.

So I don’t think you are going to stop the entire human race … but you’ll no doubt try.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Let me clarify, when I said for billions of people who’ve lived over the millennias, the believe in God is a basic fact of reality, I wasn’t saying that because a lot of people believed it, it must be true. I was saying that there’s a ***reason ***billions of people have believed in God, they’ve had various experiences where they know God as a basic fact of reality, experiences in morality and conscience, experiences lost in profound beauty, experiences looking into the eyes of a new born baby, thousands of different experiences that speak of God at a properly basic belief.

 

[Spock]

Let me clarify, when I said for billions of people who’ve lived over the millennias, the believe in God is a basic fact of reality, I wasn’t saying that because a lot of people believed it, it must be true.

That is a good clarification. Thanks.

I was saying that there’s a ***reason ***billions of people have believed in God, they’ve had various experiences where they know God as a basic fact of reality, experiences in morality and conscience, experiences lost in profound beauty, experiences looking into the eyes of a new born baby, thousands of different experiences that speak of God at a properly basic belief.

They undoubtedly consider these facts as a good reason to believe in God. Others look at the same facts and do not find them good reason to have the same or similar belief. At best there is an impasse there and neither point of view is indicative of anything.

I don’t wish to go into details here, but there is some serious cherry-picking going on - on the side of the believers. The “good stuff” is attributed to God, while the “bad stuff” is attributed to “Mother Nature”. Did you observe the fact, that whenever a disaster happens, it is always “Mother Nature” who gets the blame for it? I would be much more inclined to consider the believers’ point of view if they would not try to “whitewash” God of the “bad stuff” he does or permits or allows. But that is just me, I guess. I like the statue of Justitia (the goddess of justice) who is always depicted with a blindfold, and for a good reason.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Spock

*I don’t wish to go into details here, but there is some serious cherry-picking going on - on the side of the believers. The “good stuff” is attributed to God, while the “bad stuff” is attributed to “Mother Nature”. *

I’ve noticed some serious cherry-picking too. And I will go into detail.

When it is brought to the attention of atheists that atheists in power have produced the cruelest tyrannies of the 20th Century, you get the standard atheist defense that atheism has nothing to do with it. All atheism is is a denial of God … nothing else. As if the Marquis de Sade’s promotion of atheism had nothing to do with justifying sadistic cruelty. Only “good stuff” is attributed to atheism. All the “bad stuff” is attributed to religion.

 

[Spock]

When it is brought to the attention of atheists that atheists in power have produced the cruelest tyrannies of the 20th Century, you get the standard atheist defense that atheism has nothing to do with it. All atheism is is a denial of God … nothing else.

Almost. Atheism is the lack of belief in some god or gods - nothing more. There are and were and will be cruel, horrible atheists, just like there are and were and will be cruel and horrible believers. Also there are and were and will be kind, compassionate, decent, helpful atheists just like there are, were and will be kind, compassionate, decent and helpful theists. You cannot make any prediction concerning a person’s behavior based upon their belief or lack of it. How many times does this have to be pointed out?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Spock

*You cannot make any prediction concerning a person’s behavior based upon their belief or lack of it. How many times does this have to be pointed out? *

How many times does it have to be pointed out to you that many have used atheism as an excuse for cruelty, whereas no one has been able to use Christ as an excuse for cruelty?

*FROM DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PRIEST AND A DYING MAN

By the Marquis de Sade

DYING MAN - I say nothing of the kind. Let the evil deed be proscribed by law, let justice smite the criminal, that will be deterrent enough; but if by misfortune we do commit it even so, let’s not cry over spilled milk; remorse is inefficacious, since it does not stay us from crime, futile since it does not repair it, therefore it is absurd to beat one’s breast, more absurd still to dread being punished in another world if we have been lucky to escape it in this. God forbid that this be construed as encouragement to crime, no, we should avoid it as much as we can, but one must learn to shun it through reason and not through false fears which lead to naught and whose effects are so quickly overcome in any moderately steadfast soul. **Reason, sir - yes, our reason alone should warn us that harm done our fellows can never bring happiness to us; and our heart, that contributing to their felicity is the greatest joy Nature has accorded us on earth; the entirety of human morals is contained in this one phrase: Render others as happy as one desires oneself to be, and never inflict more pain upon them than one would like to receive at their hands. **There you are, my friend, those are the only principles we should observe, and you need neither god nor religion to appreciate and subscribe to them, you need only have a good heart
*

Notice that De Sade, an atheist, calls upon reason alone to dissuade us from cruelty. Reason never dissuaded any sadist from being sadistic. On the contrary, sadism is irrational. Any sadist will use “the ends justifies the means” reasoning as an excuse to torture or destroy others.

It’s true there have been sadists in the history of the Church, and they might have invoked Christ as De Sade invoked reason, but there is nothing in the teachings of Christ that justifies torture and cruelty, no matter what end might be announced.

To say there have been mean Christians as well as mean atheists is nothing in favor of atheism. Christianity is supposed to discourage meanness. Atheism by itself discourages nothing and only encourages us to invent our own morality, which may be a mean spirited as we like … and who is to say, without God, whether a mean-spirited morality is not as justifiable as one that is benign?

Notice too, that in the bizarre passage quoted above, De Sade invokes the very teaching of Jesus to promote right reasoning. How hypocritical is that for a sadist?

 

[Spock]

How many times does it have to be pointed out to you that many have used atheism as an excuse for cruelty, whereas no one has been able to use Christ as an excuse for cruelty?

You gotta be kidding. Some people USED atheism as an EXCUSE for cruelty, and therefore you conclude that atheism condones cruelty? And you get all upset when someone points out that Christianity condoned slavery by referring to certain passages of the Bible. When someone points out the tortures performed by the Catholic Church itself, when the Inquisition tortured witches and heretics. Of course you say that those incidents were a distortion of the “real” Christianity! Go and read the Bible, especially the section about the mote and beam! And learn not to throw bricks within your glass house.

I simply pointed out the cherry picking of giving praise to God for the good things in life, and blaming “Mother Nature” for the bad stuff. Answer that, if you can, instead of making wild accusations about atheism. Bah, HUMBUG!

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

I simply pointed out the cherry picking of giving praise to God for the good things in life, and blaming “Mother Nature” for the bad stuff. HUMBUG!

btw, in my last post I was not talking about cherry picking or giving praise to God for the good things when I said many people have experiences where the existence of God is clear to them. I’m talking about all the different experiences, the whole spectrum from little things like pangs of conscience to the full blown mystical experiences of saints like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Many people have a knowledge of God in a similar way to that in which they have the knowledge that the world we experience is real independent of us and is not a creation of our minds, complete with our minds creating the sense perceptions of sight, sound, and touch. That the world is of our experience real is a foundational knowledge, a properly basic belief, and for many people the knowledge of God is in the same way, that explains WHY billions throughout human history have believed in God.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Spock

*And you get all upset when someone points out that Christianity condoned slavery by referring to certain passages of the Bible. When someone points out the tortures performed by the Catholic Church itself, when the Inquisition tortured witches and heretics. Of course you say that those incidents were a distortion of the “real” Christianity! Go and read the Bible, especially the section about the mote and beam! And learn not to throw bricks within your glass house. *

When was the last time you heard a Christian condoning slavery or torturing witches and heretics? You have to go back quite a few centuries to make your case, don’t you? I only have to go back to the last century to make mine.

Suppose you were walking down a street and coming toward you on either side of the street were two groups. On one side was a group of thugs carrying chains, knives, and clubs. On the other side of the street was a group of young men and women carrying Bibles.

Which side of the street do you want to be on? My guess is that you want to be on the side with those toting bibles, so that you could taunt them with advocating slavery and burning witches and heretics.

I don’t think you want to be on the other side … with those who wouldn’t be caught dead in Church.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

btw, in my last post I was not talking about cherry picking or giving praise to God for the good things when I said many people have experiences where the existence of God is clear to them. I’m talking about all the different experiences, the whole spectrum from little things like pangs of conscience to the full blown mystical experiences of saints like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Many people have a knowledge of God in a similar way to that in which they have the knowledge that the world we experience is real independent of us and is not a creation of our minds, complete with our minds creating the sense perceptions of sight, sound, and touch. That the world is of our experience real is a foundational knowledge, a properly basic belief, and for many people the knowledge of God is in the same way, that explains WHY billions throughout human history have believed in God.

I am sorry to say this, but while we evidently do have experiences, what those experiences represent - in terms of truth or what the world is - have to be reasoned to, you have to interpret experiences according to traditional beliefs or philosophical insight. I require none of these in order to experience physical reality; It is just there, and it presents itself as objective as in to say that it appears detached from us, and thus its existence apart from the inner workings of the mind is easily taken for granted. Pangs of conscience is not directly referential to God. You either associate it with God because you have been bought up to believe that such a connection exists because of so called revelation, or rather you have come to knowledge of the link between morality and God through philosophy. God is not a basic belief like believing in the existence of objective physical reality.

However the belief that there is **right **and wrong is a basic belief, because we experience guilt and conscience as apart of our overall sensory experience. These experiences presuppose a meaningful relationship between objective personal human actions and the failure to fulfil what is truly and morally good. With out right and wrong guilt is meaningless. True Guilt expresses moral failure; one has failed to do what one ought. Guilt in general directly expresses its meaning to us and therefore does not require interpretation in terms of what it means, and thus it is as natural to believe in moral-realism, as it is natural to believe in the objectivity of physical reality. This is because guilt has objective meaning; it is not something we have made up.

Thus to doubt moral realism requires good reason.

Religions are often creative rationalisations of our moral and personal dimensions.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

I am sorry to say this, but while we evidently do have experiences, what those experiences represent - in terms of truth or what the world is - have to be reasoned to, you have to interpret experiences according to traditional beliefs or philosophical insight. I require none of these in order to experience physical reality; It is just there, and it presents itself as objective as in to say that it appears detached from us, and thus its existence apart from the inner workings of the mind is easily taken for granted. Pangs of conscience is not directly referential to God. You either associate it with God because you have been bought up to believe that such a connection exists because of so called revelation, or rather you have come to knowledge of the link between morality and God through philosophy. God is not a basic belief like believing in the existence of objective physical reality.

However the belief that there is **right **and wrong is a basic belief, because we experience guilt and conscience as apart of our overall sensory experience. These experiences presuppose a meaningful relationship between objective personal human actions and the failure to fulfil what is truly and morally good. With out right and wrong guilt is meaningless. True Guilt expresses moral failure; one has failed to do what one ought. Guilt in general directly expresses its meaning to us and therefore does not require interpretation in terms of what it means, and thus it is as natural to believe in moral-realism, as it is natural to believe in the objectivity of physical reality. This is because guilt has objective meaning; it is not something we have made up.

Thus to doubt moral realism requires good reason.

Religions are often creative rationalisations of our moral and personal dimensions.

You want so bad to be seen as an intellectual here that your arguments sometimes seem to just wander. If you ARE a Catholic then you should know that when people have a pang of conscience for having done wrong and they attribute that feeling of guilt to having betrayed God’s moral order, that they are correct, not that they are some automaton conditioned by philosophy or sacred writings. That’s more how an atheist would explain the feeling of conscience. But a religious person, if he did something like con a little old lady out of her savings, he would then feel the guilt associated with that action as having betrayed God’s moral code, it would be one of the many different ways men experience God, and if you’re a Catholic you might say it’s a better knowledge of the existence of God than some dry Kalam Argument or Cosmological Argument.

 

[Spock]

btw, in my last post I was not talking about cherry picking or giving praise to God for the good things when I said many people have experiences where the existence of God is clear to them. I’m talking about all the different experiences, the whole spectrum from little things like pangs of conscience to the full blown mystical experiences of saints like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Many people have a knowledge of God in a similar way to that in which they have the knowledge that the world we experience is real independent of us and is not a creation of our minds, complete with our minds creating the sense perceptions of sight, sound, and touch. That the world is of our experience real is a foundational knowledge, a properly basic belief, and for many people the knowledge of God is in the same way, that explains WHY billions throughout human history have believed in God.

The experiences you mention fall into two categories. One is something like “pangs of conscience” and “looking into the eyes of newborn” (others also bring up the beauty of a sunset, and things like that). These ones I experience as well, and see no reason to posit God as the source. If you do it, that is your business. But that is not a necessary assumption.

The other is some “mystical” stuff. The second kind is not repeatable, these individual experiences are not relevant. As far as I know, even the catholic church does not “demand” that we take other people’s experiences seriously.

You say that billions of people “experience” God. In my eyes, they think that they experience God. They cannot give me a method how to emulate their experiences. I am open to the experiment, I am willing to try. How can I get from “A” to “B”? Just don’t say that I should pray, and God will provide. That path has been tried and it was unsuccessful. And don’t say that I did not pray long enough or hard enough or honestly enough.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

You want so bad to be seen as an intellectual here that your arguments sometimes seem to just wander. If you ARE a Catholic then you should know that when people have a pang of conscience for having done wrong and they attribute that feeling of guilt to having betrayed God’s moral order, that they are correct, not that they are some automaton conditioned by philosophy or sacred writings. That’s more how an atheist would explain the feeling of conscience. But a religious person, if he did something like con a little old lady out of her savings, he would then feel the guilt associated with that action as having betrayed God’s moral code, it would be one of the many different ways men experience God, and if you’re a Catholic you might say it’s a better knowledge of the existence of God than some dry Kalam Argument or Cosmological Argument.

You believe in the existence and the concept that is described as God, and thus you associate moral realism with God. The association is not an automatic feature of human experience; and it is certainly not like experiencing physical reality. You have learned to associate that moral experience with God. That’s just a fact that any reasonable person can see,.and i really don’t care if you think i am an intellectual or not for standing by it.

In order to get from moral realism to God, you have to present a rational philosophical argument that logically and necessarily connects the two. You have not done that, you have just made assertions and then claimed that those assertions are better than any philosophical arguments for Gods existence. That is not the mark of a good thinker,