This blog by Krauss is painful. Here is my running response:
It sometimes surprises me, although it shouldn't, how religious devotees feel the need to regularly reinforce their own convictions in groups of like-minded individuals. I suppose this is the purpose of regular Sunday church services, for example, to reinforce the community of belief in between the rest of the week when the real world may show no evidence of God, goodness, fairness, or purpose.
PZ Myers Blog is just what Krauss condemned: “the need to regularly reinforce their own convictions in groups of like-minded individuals.” He participates in this very action by posting on the blog.
I will break another rule and write this blog-like note on my own perspectives, in the hope that it may circulate and counter some of the nonsense that has propagated in the fundamentalist and religious blogs of late. Perhaps Craig will post this on his blog and send it out as well.
Krauss seemingly loves to break his rules. He seems to do it so often that they become meaningless to call them rules.
I also wanted to demonstrate the need for nuance, to explain how these issues are far more complex than Craig, in his simplistic view of the world, makes them out to be.
Ad hominem
Unfortunately any effort I made to show nuance and actually explain facts was systematically distorted in Craig's continual effort to demonstrate how high school syllogisms apparently demonstrated definitive evidence for God.
High school syllogism? I thought syllogisms were discovered and developed by Aristotle. In fact this statement by Krauss is a “high school syllogism” and thus, by his measurement, no good.
Let me now comment, with the gloves off, on the disingenuous distortions, simplifications, and outright lies that I regard Craig as having spouted. I was very disappointed because I had heard that Craig was more of a philosopher than a proselytizer, but that was not evident the other evening.
Ad hominem
It is hard to think of a grander claim than evidence for a divine being who creates the universe without apparent purpose, dominated by dark matter and dark energy and containing hundreds of billions of galaxies, lets it evolve untouched for billions of years, and then roughly a million years into human evolution decides to intervene at a time before Youtube or any other objective recording and archiving tool was available.)
What’s hard to think is he thinks this is a grander claim than modern quantum mechanics which he called irrational and illogical but still legitimate, but this claim is illegitimate, what a double standard.
Wait, Youtube is an objective recording and archiving tool. I guess 9/11 was an inside governmental job because Youtube reported it. How ludicrous, the early Hebrews had an advanced language and written system as well as the New Testament era with a highly developed Greek language.
Happily it is precisely this progress in our natural philosophy that ended such religious atrocities as the burning of witches.
Wait, wait. Did he really write this? Science literally ended witch burnings? Speaking of disingenuous distortions, simpl
ifications, and outright lies that Krauss blames Craig having committed, this is one is one of the biggest distortions of church history. Who ended the witch burnings? The church, not science.
The resurrection of Jesus, and that fact that the followers of Jesus were willing to die for their beliefs provides evidence of God
Craig NEVER claimed this. This is another example of Krauss’s distortion of the Craig’s argument. The claim is that the disciples obviously believed Christ rose from the dead because they were willing to die for it, they might be wrong, but they were obviously sincere about their belief given that they were willing to die for it. But this isn’t the reason to believe in the resurrection. It’s this point along with the empty tomb and the appearance of the post-mortem appearance which are also established through the modern historical method that gives reason that God raised Jesus from the dead.
Craig argued that most New Testament scholars believe in the resurrection.
Again, Craig did not say this. Most NT scholars believe three facts: empty tomb, appearances of Christ, and radical transformation of the disciple’s belief in the resurrection. Many of these NT scholars actually don’t believe in the resurrection but they do accept these three facts. Krauss, you need to accurately represent, not distort.
there are historians who doubt the historical existence of Jesus himself.
Yes, and there are historians who deny the holocaust. How do we respond: we ignore them because that is a ridiculous position. There is more evidence (secular testimony) for the historicity of Jesus than for Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus: ten non-Christian sources for Jesus within 150 years of his life and nine non-Christian sources for Tiberius within 150 years of his life. That doesn’t even include the multiple sources of the New Testament for the historicity of Jesus.
this in a hackneyed way that recreated previous resurrection myths, down to the number of days before being raised from the dead, of several previous, and now long-gone religious cults
This claim is a hundred years out of date. The history-of-religions school of thought that promoted this claim in the early 20th century completely abandoned this position because all the supposed resurrection stories in other myths and cults are dated after the resurrection of Jesus. T. N. D. Mettinger, a senior Swedish scholar, professor at Lund University, and a member of the Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities of Stockholm, wrote in his definitive work on the supposed “borrowed” resurrection stories The Riddle of the Resurrection, that “There is, as far as I am aware, no pima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.” (221) Manfred Clauss, professor of ancient history at Free Univ. of Berlin claimed in The Roman Cult of Mithras that it doesn’t make sense to interpret the Mithraic mysteries “as a fore-runner of Christianity.” L. Patterson, in his book Mithraism and Christianity (Cambridge Univ. Press) concludes there is “no direct connection between the two religions [Christianity and Mithraism] either in origin or development.” Krauss needs to stop watching Zeitgeist videos on Youtube and catch up to the research. Oh wait, I forgot, Youtube is an objective recording and archiving tool according to Krauss.
Finally, the remarkable, and completely trite claim that the fact the Christians were willing to die for their beliefs demonstrates the validity of these beliefs would be laughable, if it weren't so pitiful.
What’s pitiful is the Krauss actually wrote this. Craig did not claim that because they were willing to die for their beliefs demonstrated the validity of their beliefs, only that their beliefs were sincere. That coupled with the other established historical facts beg for an adequate explanation that explains all of the facts. God raising Jesus from the dead explains all of them. Other explanations are inadequate because they don’t have the explanatory scope needed to be the best explanation.
I found and still find Craig's statement [that the disciples were willing to die for the belief of the resurrection] not only facile, and not even worthy of a high school debater, but I find the claim offensive.
The only thing shallow here is Krauss’s inability to follow Craig’s argument as evidenced by this gross misrepresentation of Craig’s position. Who cares if you find it offensive. You being upset by a claim is not the best avenue in determining truth. Follow the argument and put your feeling aside.
OK, I can’t handle any more of this. Someone else can respond to the rest of his blog.
