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

[Philip Rand]

neopolitan... I did give you one that you did give up on...

I'll give you another (these syllogism are awfully easy to formulate) that shows you how my previous one works...

1/  If chess does not exist then the perfect chess game does not exist.

2/  A perfect chess game does exist.

3/  Therefore chess exists.

Now, if you analyse this syllogism in detail you will find that an external constraint is required to ground the syllogism... I'll let you find it...

My previous syllogism works exactly in the same manner...

Your interpretation of syllogisms appear confused...

For example... pi is a number, it exists... we use it in geometry calculations... Craig would say this in one of his arguments say...

But, what you would do... is this:

"Hang on!  The number pi cannot be located on a linear number graph... therefore the number pi does not exist!"

"So, your statement Dr Craig is a lie... you are saying that the number pi exists... when in fact I, neopolitan have proved that pi does not exist!"

[neopolitan]

neopolitan... I did give you one that you did give up on...

I have a word for this sort of thing, triumfantalism.  Think pigeon chess.

I just hadn't seen your previous post.  Remember that my world does not revolve around responding to you.  I may have a look at it later, if I have the time and inclination.

I'll give you another (these syllogism are awfully easy to formulate) that shows you how my previous one works...

1/  If chess does not exist then the perfect chess game does not exist.

2/  A perfect chess game does exist.

3/  Therefore chess exists.

Now, if you analyse this syllogism in detail you will find that an external constraint is required to ground the syllogism... I'll let you find it...

I'm not allowed to use the word that I want to use to describe this.  Hopefully I am allowed to use "nonsense" as in "complete and utter nonsense, Vyvyan".

What is this "analyse in detail"?  All you have here is the standard ∄A→∄B;∃B;∴∃A, where A=chess and B=perfect chess game, rather than A=God and B=objective moral values and duties.  The content of the syllogism doesn't affect the validity of the syllogism.

I think you've got the word "awful" in the wrong spot, you've conjugated it incorrectly and you've left out the word "wrong".

My previous syllogism works exactly in the same manner...

Of course it does.  It's the same syllogism.

Your interpretation of syllogisms appear confused...

For example... pi is a number, it exists... we use it in geometry calculations...

Thank you, Steven Hawking.  It really helps when you explain these sorts of things.  If this was written by anyone else (well, not RichardChad), I'd have presumed that you were being condescending.  Fortunately, I can assume that you were just being charitable.

Craig would say this in one of his arguments say...

But, what you would do... is this:

"Hang on!  The number pi cannot be located on a linear number graph... therefore the number pi does not exist!"

"So, your statement Dr Craig is a lie... you are saying that the number pi exists... when in fact I, neopolitan have proved that pi does not exist!"

Um, your number skills are not in my league, Phil.  I know you probably work these things out in your head, but sometimes I find it useful to use mathematics.  Look at this linear graph, it has numbers and it has pi shown clearly.

So no.  I would not make any such claim.  I think you probably meant that pi is not a rational number, etc.  But even so, pi most certainly exists and it is used for much more than geometry calculations.  I'd provide a link, but who would we be kidding, you wouldn't read up on it.

Proverbs 17:28 - although the Abraham Lincoln version is more pithy.

[Philip Rand]

But, neopolitan when you write:

I just hadn't seen your previous post.

Not only did you read the post...you even responded to the post...

1/  If God does not exist then concept-acquisition does not exist.

2/  Concept-acquisition does exist

3/  Therefore God exists.

You can make as many versions of this argument as you like, of the form:

(1) If God does not exist then (some thing claimed to be dependent on the existence of god) does not exist

(2) (some thing claimed to be dependent on the existence of god) does exist

(3) Therefore God exists

But atheists will argue one of two things, either that the thing does not actually exist (the soul for example) or the thing is not actually dependent on the existence of god.  Presenting endless versions of the same structure won't help you.

[neopolitan]

But, neopolitan when you write:

I just hadn't seen your previous post.

Not only did you read the post...you even responded to the post...

1/  If God does not exist then concept-acquisition does not exist.

2/  Concept-acquisition does exist

3/  Therefore God exists.

You can make as many versions of this argument as you like, of the form:

(1) If God does not exist then (some thing claimed to be dependent on the existence of god) does not exist

(2) (some thing claimed to be dependent on the existence of god) does exist

(3) Therefore God exists

But atheists will argue one of two things, either that the thing does not actually exist (the soul for example) or the thing is not actually dependent on the existence of god.  Presenting endless versions of the same structure won't help you.

What do you think you are doing?

The previous post that I had not seen was this one #244.  That's the one I am still to reply to.  I already replied to #204, as you point out.  I replied to the reply to my response, and to the reply to the response to that reply.  I asked you to come back when you had something coherent to say and for all I knew you'd disengaged.

What exactly is going on in your head?  It seems like you came back far too early.  (Although at first glance I did find #244 interesting.)

[Philip Rand]

neopolitan the issue I pointed out was your post:

I await LionIRC's glorious non-biblical defence of deism-plus theism.

Hence, I mentioned I gave you one... the one you refer to is not a syllogism... it was a way of interpreting your "debate" issue...

Besides... the God syllogism is "coherent", i.e. it is predictive, it contains an internal relation... and when linked to the chess syllogism and my suggestion for you to find the external constraint that grounds the syllogism... showing you how to "understand" what it is stating...

It is not my problem that you do not understand central philosophical terms like concept-acquisition, internal-relation, etc.

These terms are simply variables... and reduce exposition...

[neopolitan]

neopolitan the issue I pointed out was your post:

I await LionIRC's glorious non-biblical defence of deism-plus theism.

Hence, I mentioned I gave you one... the one you refer to is not a syllogism... it was a way of interpreting your "debate" issue...

You did not give me what I was talking about.  I was talking about LionIRC's glorious non-biblical defence of deism-plus theism.  You did not provide that.  Even if it was a non-biblical defence of deism-plus theism, it would be yours, not his and I've never intimated that I was interested in you providing me with such a defence.

In any event, it wasn't a defence.  It was just a valid syllogism (of the form ∄A→∄B;∃B;∴∃A) with at least one false premise (two if you are working the basis of a false understanding of what concept acquisition means, which is likely since you seem to insert an unnecessary hyphen into the term).  I'm not sure you even understand what would constitute a non-biblical defence of deism-plus theism.  (The chances of you understanding what I meant by "deism-plus" are remote too, I think LionIRC will because I introduced the term in the context of an on-going discussion.)

Besides... the God syllogism is "coherent", i.e. it is predictive, it contains an internal relation... and when linked to the chess syllogism and my suggestion for you to find the external constraint that grounds the syllogism... showing you how to "understand" what it is stating...

This is just gobbledygook.  Perhaps there is some meaning in there that you are just expressing very, very poorly but if so it was up to you to try harder to express what it was that you meant.

It is not my problem that you do not understand central philosophical terms like concept-acquisition, internal-relation, etc.

These terms are simply variables... and reduce exposition...

You can wave terms around as much as you like, it doesn't mean that you understand them nor does it mean that they are relevant in context.

I really don't think that we have much to talk about, Mr Rand.  You appear quite unschooled from my perspective, even if you are enthusiastic.  From our discussions there doesn't appear to be much potential for improvement and I am not particularly interested in learning about your view of the world to the extent that a discussion with you might become vaguely fruitful.  For the purposes of remaining irenic, therefore, I suggest that we draw this to a close.  I was interested in your earlier post, past tense being operative, but I am more than willing to abandon looking into that, because I don't think anything of value will ever come from that either.

I understand that you like your god, that you believe firmly  in your god, that you like your understanding of logic, even if it differs from standing understandings of logic, and that you think that your logic with your premises somehow constitutes a defence of your god.  But I think we should just agree to disagree and I won't trouble you further.  Please extend to me a similar courtesy.  Thanks.

[Lion IRC]

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.

I'm going to disagree. I don't think you can publicly accuse your interlocutor of being a &@#¥!!£
...and then carry on debating as if you hadn't transgressed the fallacy - whether deliberately or otherwise.

When two people, in front of an Internet audience, are contesting an idea, the use of an abusive ad hominem should be presumed (by default) to be a defacto attempt to denigrate the credibility/validity of their opponent and dissuade/persuade others in the audience.

If not, what other purpose does an ad hom serve in the context of persuasive argument?

It's otherwise completely irrelevant.

And you can't say the insult is 'not part of your argument', or that 'you've already won the argument' and so are now free to lob a parting insult at your opponent, or that '...it's not an insult if it's true.'

This is an Internet forum and a passer-by who lands, initially, at page 4 of an ongoing debate thread and sees
..."'you're an idiot Lion IRC'" doesn't know the context or how that applies to every other thread where they subsequently encounter posts by Lion IRC.

Quite apart from the desirability of irenic discussion and good manners and forum rules, the abusive ad hom always constitutes a fallacy no matter how diluted or concentrated that fallacy may be. (IMHO)

[Lion IRC]

Hey neo, we postponed moving on from the sylogism discussion until it was fully hashed out and it now seems everyone has had their say. Those who defended WLC seemed pretty insistent that his logic was sound although you nonetheless are basically sticking to your position. Fair enough.

Could we we now move on and take up my earlier issue?

...I would next like to bring up your blog about;
"The Method of WLC's Madness"

Specifically Occams Razor and how it applies critically AGAINST your (special pleading) statement;

"...The major problem with a god solution is that the god solution raises questions that are more difficult than those it answers.  That’s negative explanatory power."

The God conclusion answers the HOW and the WHY.

Your non-theist model effectively leaves our existential "WHY" questions unanswered.
(See Coyne, Dawkins, Krauss, Myers, etc. dismissing these with the wave of a hand.)

Now, I ask, which is the simpler, neater, more satisfying theory according to Occam? The  complicated one which has all those loose thread, unanswered questions dangling enigmatically, or the neatly bundled Unified Theory of Everything we call the God Conclusion?

I argue that it is atheism - not theism - which has all the unnecessary 'embranglements'.
And that Occam would prefer the neater bundle with fewer loose threads.

[D. Alexander]

Neo had agreed that his logic was valid but the way he constructed his argument seemed (to Neo) to be deceptive for the reason being that it could have been constructed as:

(1) If objective moral values and duties exist, then God exists
(2) p
(3) q

This syllogism would have been equivalent to:

(1) If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist
(2) ~q
(3) ~p

The deception part that he's speaking of is that in the former syllogism denying q leads to the denial of p (Affirms that God does not exist) and in the latter the denial of q denies  p (affirms that God does exist)

But, this means that God is untouchable in the context of the argument regarding moral values in the latter but not the former. (you can deny q to deny p)

But, Craig probably believes that if not OMV, not God. This belief is not expressed in his argument though and he could have easily done the former. (denying q to deny p does not deny God in this case; it affirms it through affirming OMV; but denying OMV (affirming q) cannot be used to deny God)

Or something like that. Hence, the "nots".

Edit: Sorry for killing what you were trying to do. I'll probably create another thread to argue specifically on this and allow you to move forward.

[Lion IRC]

'Why' questions matter more than how questions. When push comes to shove, even the uber materialists accidentally slip up and reveal their attachment to the existential "why" paradigm.

Lawrence Krauss say...

...physics has basically solved the mystery of why there is something
rather than nothing.

Hey George Ellis, do you agree?


George Ellis say:

“Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on.

He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all,
or why they should have had the form they did.

And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism.

How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed?  You can’t."

…what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true.”

YABBUT…............

Atheism-of-the-gaps say:

…I am hopeful, along with some physicists, science will one day answer that question..

No, no, Richard. You have it all wrong.

If a theory is “sufficiently elegant” and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally.



Sean Carrol say :

…In complicated situations, fortune-cookie-sized mottos like "theories should be falsifiable" are no substitute for careful thinking about how science works.

See that? Many in the 'scientific atheism' vanguard are actually beginning to demur and back away from the epistemology of the empirical/scientific method.

They say if a theory (ie. their theory) has "the right vibe" we should just accept it.

See physicist Marcelo Gleiser’s breathtaking (unintentional) admission that quantum physics might be little more than the newest form of religion, (New Scientist May 2010) and that the only way to try and take (the real) God out of the picture is to invent/imagine something else as a replacement. That "something else", we are told, by people with straight faces, can never be empirically verified, only intuited.

The grand unified theory of everything, Mr Gleiser tells us, is simply not possible, not only because we don’t have the right tools (empiricism) but primarily because you cant verify something which doesn’t really/materially exist.

According to this post-modern, weak-kneed form of atheist physics, reality simply isn’t suited to empirical measurement and even if it was we don’t know how to make the sort of telescope/microscope/durometer
one would need to do so.


"...For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
-Robert Jastrow

[neopolitan]

Your mine-quoted rant is staggeringly off-topic, LionIRC.  Please put it in another thread, or at the very least, tie it to some article in which I defend notions of science against the anti-science of certain theists.  But hold it off until we've addressed the issues at hand.

[neopolitan]

Edit: Sorry for killing what you were trying to do. I'll probably create another thread to argue specifically on this and allow you to move forward.

Not at all, Coffin.  Unless I've misread what you wrote, or intended, you've hit the nail on the head.  I'm pathetically appreciative that someone has understood the point.

The only thing I'd add is that Craig presents this argument in debate format (but not always and not exclusively) and the effect is to mislead (intentionally or otherwise).  When he's galloping through his arguments (the moral argument is not usually the first off the rank, so the listener is already a little unburdened) it can seem to the listener that Craig's first premise is something along the lines of "if god then objective moral values and duties" which is not controversial.  The non-believer can go along with this premise the same way as she might go along with "if god, then I will burn in hell for eternity" or "if god, then homosexuals should be stoned to death".  The argument as it continues creates a sense of confusion, there's surely a sense of right and wrong, but that seems to lead inexorably to god, and that can't be right.  To be able to address the argument better, the listener needs to scroll back up and read the argument again, but she can't because she's a listener and by now Craig is either talking about the resurrection or about how he was smitten by a girl at school and that all these arguments don't really matter anyway.

That's part of the reason that I was keen to write the argument down, in pixels, for people to be able to digest at a slower pace.

It's wrong, but it doesn't immediately appear to be wrong.

[Lion IRC]

neo - it goes directly to your statement about explanatory power and the principle of Occams Razor.

You wrote;

"...The major problem with a god solution is that the god solution raises questions that are more difficult than those it answers.  That’s negative explanatory power."

I'm pointing out that it's the other way around.

[neopolitan]

Hey neo, we postponed moving on from the sylogism discussion until it was fully hashed out and it now seems everyone has had their say. Those who defended WLC seemed pretty insistent that his logic was sound although you nonetheless are basically sticking to your position. Fair enough.

Could we we now move on and take up my earlier issue?

...I would next like to bring up your blog about;
"The Method of WLC's Madness"

Specifically Occams Razor and how it applies critically AGAINST your (special pleading) statement;

"...The major problem with a god solution is that the god solution raises questions that are more difficult than those it answers.  That’s negative explanatory power."

The God conclusion answers the HOW and the WHY.

Your non-theist model effectively leaves our existential "WHY" questions unanswered.
(See Coyne, Dawkins, Krauss, Myers, etc. dismissing these with the wave of a hand.)

Now, I ask, which is the simpler, neater, more satisfying theory according to Occam? The  complicated one which has all those loose thread, unanswered questions dangling enigmatically, or the neatly bundled Unified Theory of Everything we call the God Conclusion?

I argue that it is atheism - not theism - which has all the unnecessary 'embranglements'.
And that Occam would prefer the neater bundle with fewer loose threads.

You've only addressed one single syllogism.  Are you sure that only want to address the morality argument at this time?  I do think it's better to go with the arguments that are linked to from The Logic of an Apologist (WLC1-WLC7 plust WLC8 which is about his abuse of conditional probability), but I want to make sure that this is your intention.

If so, fine.  I am going to be away for much of the weekend, so I may not get to this in the short-term.

Note that you seem to be blending science and atheism.  They are very closely linked without being exactly the same thing.  This is why I think your anti-science rant (even though you erroneously and equivocably link it to the "why" question) is firmly off-topic.

[Lion IRC]

I told you what I wanted. If you're not ready to move on to my next objection, that's fine.

And I'm not blending atheism and science.  You guys built that trope, not me.