Has Anyone Noticed Neopolitan's "Craig's Top Errors"?

[neopolitan]

So to answer pch's question, no you have not read his scholarly work. I'm sure he would have found it more helpful if you wrote that at the beginning instead of going on your endless spiel.

I'm not interested in his "scholarly" work.  I'm interested in how people deal with him in debates and how his devotees try to defend the points that he raises in his debates.

You are more than welcome to read his "scholarly" work, if that would please you.

[neopolitan]

It's worth remembering that scholarly philosophical works are not what Dr Craig uses in his debates, it is his debates, and the arguments he relies on in them that led most of us here. And this forum seems intended for the purpose of discussing the arguments he relies on in debates. The scholarly works are very technical and not really pertinent to the intent of this forum.

Agreed.  It's also worth mentioning that I am not writing dissertations without reading WLC's "scholarly" work.  I'm interacting with a tiny sub-set of Craig's enormous evangelical army.  Most of whom haven't read his stuff either.

(For PCH: Why "scholarly" and not scholarly?  Because it's only your assertion that the work is scholarly.  I personally doubt that any work he has that supports the specific arguments that I have dealt with would be scholarly.  But I am a sceptic, so what did you expect?)

[Bertuzzi]

Wow.

[HIJ]

It's worth remembering that scholarly philosophical works are not what Dr Craig uses in his debates, it is his debates, and the arguments he relies on in them that led most of us here. And this forum seems intended for the purpose of discussing the arguments he relies on in debates. The scholarly works are very technical and not really pertinent to the intent of this forum.

Agreed.  It's also worth mentioning that I am not writing dissertations without reading WLC's "scholarly" work.  I'm interacting with a tiny sub-set of Craig's enormous evangelical army.  Most of whom haven't read his stuff either.

(For PCH: Why "scholarly" and not scholarly?  Because it's only your assertion that the work is scholarly.  I personally doubt that any work he has that supports the specific arguments that I have dealt with would be scholarly.  But I am a sceptic, so what did you expect?)

I use "scholarly" to refer to things that have been published by an academic publisher or in an academic journal. What do you use it to refer to?

It doesn't seem to me that you're a skeptic at all. You seem to be a pretty credulous guy. I mean, you actually cite Wikipedia on your blog http://neophilosophical.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-method-of-wlcs-madness.html You also seem to want to agree with just about anything that will support your position--as long as it's not theistic, you're in.

[HIJ]

It's worth remembering that scholarly philosophical works are not what Dr Craig uses in his debates, it is his debates, and the arguments he relies on in them that led most of us here. And this forum seems intended for the purpose of discussing the arguments he relies on in debates. The scholarly works are very technical and not really pertinent to the intent of this forum.

Agreed.  It's also worth mentioning that I am not writing dissertations without reading WLC's "scholarly" work.  I'm interacting with a tiny sub-set of Craig's enormous evangelical army.  Most of whom haven't read his stuff either.

(For PCH: Why "scholarly" and not scholarly?  Because it's only your assertion that the work is scholarly.  I personally doubt that any work he has that supports the specific arguments that I have dealt with would be scholarly.  But I am a sceptic, so what did you expect?)

I use "scholarly" to refer to things that have been published by an academic publisher or in an academic journal. What do you use it to refer to?

It doesn't seem to me that you're a skeptic at all. You seem to be a pretty credulous guy. I mean, you actually cite Wikipedia on your blog http://neophilosophical.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-method-of-wlcs-madness.html You also seem to want to agree with just about anything that will support your position--as long as it's not theistic, you're in.

It seems to me that almost all of the theistic response to criticisms of the arguments take the form of ad hominen.

If you're implying that I have committed an ad hominem, then I'm afraid that you don't know what an ad hominem is.

[D. Alexander]

Because I enjoy being pedantic, I don't think “ad hominem” is short for “ad hominem fallacy”.

The former can just mean “attacking the man” while the latter is “attacking the man to invalidate his position.”

I'm just entertaining the idea though. It is true that a lot of persons throwing that fallacy around don't know what it even is.

[neopolitan]

I use "scholarly" to refer to things that have been published by an academic publisher or in an academic journal. What do you use it to refer to?

It doesn't seem to me that you're a skeptic at all. You seem to be a pretty credulous guy. I mean, you actually cite Wikipedia on your blog http://neophilosophical.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-method-of-wlcs-madness.html You also seem to want to agree with just about anything that will support your position--as long as it's not theistic, you're in.

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I have claimed that my blog articles are scholarly.  I've not done that.

I hate the tedium of referencing, but I do try to assist readers by providing links to a freely available, quite reliable information that explains some of my terms.  Note that I don't recommend at any point that anyone should accept what I have to say uncritically, nor do I expect that anyone should take what I provide links to uncritically.  If you, or any other reader, does that then it's your look-out and I doubt that what I write is going to do anymore damage than you have already done to yourself.

You complain specifically about the link in The Method to WLC's Madness (this is a play on words and a cultural reference, a cue that I am educated and amenable to more rarefied discussion with other educated people.  I'm not actually inferring that WLC is historically insane).  There's only one link in that article and it leads the reader directly to a subsection of the Historical Method entry at wikipedia:

C. Behan McCullagh lays down seven conditions for a successful argument to the best explanation: [11]

• The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)
• The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.
• The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.
• The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.
• The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.
• It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.
  
• It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.

McCullagh sums up, "if the scope and strength of an explanation are very great, so that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any competing explanation, then it is likely to be true." [12]

The footnotes, [11] and [12] refer the reader to Justifying Historical Descriptions, by C. Behan McCullagh.  Note that McCullagh self-identifies as a "credible christian" and has made available sermons to that effect, so you have no good reason to object to wikipedia using his criteria for "inference to best explanation".

I agree that my words could be misinterpreted to mean that WLC got his ideas regarding "explanatory principle" from wikipedia.  It's a bizarre interpretation, an uncharitable interpretation and certainly not the intended interpretation.  But I can see how one might reach it, if one were uncharitable.  I don't intend to squeeze the life out of my writing by continually trying to imagine what sort of mess an uncharitable reader might make of my words, so I am not going to remove this source of potential confusion.  Instead, it can act as a sort of filter.  If someone makes the misinterpretation, then I have learned something about that person.

Note that this response is dripping with links.  Rarely do I see any theist doing anything similar.  Their arguments all seem to boil down to them squealing about what they believe and how we should respect their beliefs.  Happy to let you believe whatever you believe, but do it in the privacy of your own homes.  As soon as you start making noises about them, expect that those beliefs will be critically and sometimes unfavourably examined by people like myself.

[HIJ]

I use "scholarly" to refer to things that have been published by an academic publisher or in an academic journal. What do you use it to refer to?

It doesn't seem to me that you're a skeptic at all. You seem to be a pretty credulous guy. I mean, you actually cite Wikipedia on your blog http://neophilosophical.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-method-of-wlcs-madness.html You also seem to want to agree with just about anything that will support your position--as long as it's not theistic, you're in.

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I have claimed that my blog articles are scholarly.  I've not done that.

I hate the tedium of referencing, but I do try to assist readers by providing links to a freely available, quite reliable information that explains some of my terms.  Note that I don't recommend at any point that anyone should accept what I have to say uncritically, nor do I expect that anyone should take what I provide links to uncritically.  If you, or any other reader, does that then it's your look-out and I doubt that what I write is going to do anymore damage than you have already done to yourself.

You complain specifically about the link in The Method to WLC's Madness (this is a play on words and a cultural reference, a cue that I am educated and amenable to more rarefied discussion with other educated people.  I'm not actually inferring that WLC is historically insane).  There's only one link in that article and it leads the reader directly to a subsection of the Historical Method entry at wikipedia:

C. Behan McCullagh lays down seven conditions for a successful argument to the best explanation: [11]

• The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)
• The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.
• The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.
• The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.
• The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.
• It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.
  
• It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.

McCullagh sums up, "if the scope and strength of an explanation are very great, so that it explains a large number and variety of facts, many more than any competing explanation, then it is likely to be true." [12]

The footnotes, [11] and [12] refer the reader to Justifying Historical Descriptions, by C. Behan McCullagh.  Note that McCullagh self-identifies as a "credible christian" and has made available sermons to that effect, so you have no good reason to object to wikipedia using his criteria for "inference to best explanation".

I agree that my words could be misinterpreted to mean that WLC got his ideas regarding "explanatory principle" from wikipedia.  It's a bizarre interpretation, an uncharitable interpretation and certainly not the intended interpretation.  But I can see how one might reach it, if one were uncharitable.  I don't intend to squeeze the life out of my writing by continually trying to imagine what sort of mess an uncharitable reader might make of my words, so I am not going to remove this source of potential confusion.  Instead, it can act as a sort of filter.  If someone makes the misinterpretation, then I have learned something about that person.

Note that this response is dripping with links.  Rarely do I see any theist doing anything similar.  Their arguments all seem to boil down to them squealing about what they believe and how we should respect their beliefs.  Happy to let you believe whatever you believe, but do it in the privacy of your own homes.  As soon as you start making noises about them, expect that those beliefs will be critically and sometimes unfavourably examined by people like myself.

WLC usually doesn't provide links because you cannot link something in a scholarly article. I also never interpreted you in the (funny but) uncharitable way you suggest. Rather, I was saying that you just plain don't seem to be a skeptical person. The fact that you have to tell people that you are a skeptic or else they would not know is also telling.

(For Bunyip: I don't necessarily endorse all (any?) of WLC's arguments, so I don't feel hugely compelled to defend them.  Moreover, why would I address objections that don't touch his scholarly work? Should I just pretend that his arguments are as simple as he makes them seem? Again, suppose that someone criticized Stephen Hawking's work and based their criticism on A Brief History of Time. Should we regard the critic as a serious person who needs to be addressed? Clearly not.)

[neopolitan]

WLC usually doesn't provide links because you cannot link something in a scholarly article.

That is cunning.  So cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.  (This is another cultural reference and by no means an implication that you, good sir, are a weasel.)

If Craig were truly dedicated to the divine, he would be more than willing to make his work freely available at his website, making the provision of links incredibly easy.  Many (proper) academics do this, rather than hiding their work behind the academic equivalent of paywalls.

I also never interpreted you in the (funny but) uncharitable way you suggest.

Congratulations, you made it past the filter.

Rather, I was saying that you just plain don't seem to be a skeptical person. The fact that you have to tell people that you are a skeptic or else they would not know is also telling.

Hm.  I'm not a sceptic, huh?  I'm rather sceptical of your claim.  Can you provide evidence?

You seem to be labouring under a misapprehension that I occasionally tell people that I am a sceptic in order to shore up my position as a sceptic.  This simply isn't true.  I occasionally remind people that I am a sceptic because they appear to have forgotten, in much the same way as I might remind someone offering me meat that I am a vegan and someone offering me a vodka martini that I am not James Bond.  (I'm not a vegan.  That was purely hypothetical.  And I'd accept the vodka martini.  At the least the first and second one.  Perhaps the third.  After that who knows, I'd probably be in the hot-tub singing jingles for washing powder.  What the heck, I can have another one.)

The point being that your accusation that I am not a sceptic seems calibrated to irritate me, and it's not working.  I'm just laughing at you.  Not to irritate you, mind you, but merely because you are so amusing.  It's like watching a toddler get hit by a swing on one of those home videos.  I know I should feel differently, but I can't help myself (and clearly the toddler isn't damaged for life, I hope).  Perhaps you could stop trying this tactic, so that we can irenically discuss the content of the issues?

(For Bunyip: I don't necessarily endorse all (any?) of WLC's arguments, so I don't feel hugely compelled to defend them.  Moreover, why would I address objections that don't touch his scholarly work? Should I just pretend that his arguments are as simple as he makes them seem? Again, suppose that someone criticized Stephen Hawking's work and based their criticism on A Brief History of Time. Should we regard the critic as a serious person who needs to be addressed? Clearly not.)

Um, what?  You don't endorse WLC, but you are encouraging me to read his work (and I assume, therefore, that you haven't read it either?  Or are you saying that despite (or because) more in depth understanding of Craig's positions, you disagree with them?

You are quite a mysterious person, PCH.

On the issues above, I did say that my interest is in Craig's debates and those who are his devotees, who tend to raise various versions of Craig's arguments (be they from Reasonable Faith, the book or the site, his debates and, in some isolated cases, whatever they have misunderstood from discussions with other devotees).  Would it be acceptable for Craig, in his debates, to raise his arguments and then deflect every objection with "Have you read my book?  No?  Then shut up."  It's ridiculous there and it's ridiculous here, even if the objection is being provided by a proxy (you) to another proxy (me).

[Philip Rand]

neopolitan...

Now, your issue is becoming clearer...

You have issues with "debates"... Your position is that a winner of a debate does not necessarily have the best arguments... but, that generally a winner of a debate is perceived to have the best arguments, therefore their arguments are true... you have a problem with this...

Now, I understand why you dislike looking at particular arguments.

I would agree, debates are a most inefficient and dangerous method in examining knowledge... they are intended for the lay public...

But, this is the conclusion one should rationally have...end of.

But, what you are doing instead is to say that Craig wins debates because he deliberately "cheats"... his arguments appear to be the best (and therefore true) only because he cheats...

Here, I believe you are guilty of the crime you accuse Craig of in his syllogisms, i.e. twisting arguments...

Because, what you are saying is:

1/  Debates are an efficient way to explore true knowledge.
2/  The winner of a debate is the person who has the best arguments
3/  Therefore these arguments are true.

However, in the case of Craig... you say this is not true...his arguments are illusory though they win the debate...therefore his arguments are all lies and he wins debates by cheating...

So, here I would say you are equivocating over "debates", on the one hand you appear to be saying that debates are not a reflection of truth... and on the other hand debates are a reflection of truth...

[Philip Rand]

Well Bunyip...

If winning a debate is purely subjective and you don't know what "winning a debate" means...

What is neopolitan's problem?

It suggests that neopolitan's  conscern is illusory and non-sense...i.e. he is simply being bewitched by language.

[neopolitan]

Well Bunyip...

If winning a debate is purely subjective and you don't know what "winning a debate" means...

What is neopolitan's problem?

It suggests that neopolitan's  conscern is illusory and non-sense...i.e. he is simply being bewitched by language.

Why are you asking Bunyip what my problem is?  Can't you guys even put the effort in to misrepresent us yourselves?  You now want to get us to misrepresent each other?

I'm curious to know what my problem is.  I look forward to Bunyip's explanation.

[Philip Rand]

neopolitan...

I am not misrepresenting you... I am trying to figure out what you are going on about...

Explain yourself!

[neopolitan]

neopolitan...

I am not misrepresenting you... I am trying to figure out what you are going on about...

Explain yourself!

Sorry, can't do.  I have been dismissed.

[neopolitan]

Hang on, no.  You're not RichardChad.  You just argue the same way as RichardChad.  Please see my responses to RichardChad.  I think they'll apply equally well to you.  In any event, please consider me dismissed while I await LionIRC's glorious non-biblical defence of deism-plus theism.