Talk:William Lane Craig

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Undefined vs. indeterminate

From the article:

In his debate with Professor Millican and elsewhere, Craig claims that "infinity minus infinity is undefined in transfinite arithmetic..." This claim is abjectly false -- in transfinite arithmetic, infinity minus infinity is indeterminate. A mathematical operation that is indeterminate has more than one solution, […]. […] This is fundamentally different than saying that something is undefined, which means that there is no solution to the problem.

Well, if κ is a transfinite cardinal, the equation κ + α = κ has infinitely many solutions for α. Craig did say: “There’s more than one solution to the equation.” But this is a reason to leave “κ − κ” undefined for transfinite cardinals κ.

So here is what Craig got backwards: He seems to think that while the multitude of solutions is not a problem for transfinite arithmetic in mathematics since a mathematician might simply avoid subtracting ℵ₀ from ℵ₀, it does imply that there cannot be (actually) infinitely many objects in the real world because if there were, nothing would stop you to take countably infinitely many objects away from countably infinitely many, by which you could get different quantities, which to Craig is contradictory. (“You can slap the hand of the mathematician who tries to subtract infinity from infinity, but you can’t stop someone from taking away a certain number of coins. And the contradiction is that you have identical quantities, you subtract identical quantities, and you come up with non-identical results.”)

First off, the contrast (on the one hand, logical consistency, on the other hand, metaphysical impossibility) is ridiculous. Even when you avoid the expression “ℵ₀ − ℵ₀”, it is still the case that there is more than one solution to the equation ℵ₀ + α = ℵ₀. Second, no contradiction has been demonstrated here. You arrive at different quantities by different ways of subtracting. Taking away all natural numbers greater than 1 from the set of natural numbers results in the set {0, 1} of cardinality 2, taking away all natural numbers greater than 0 from it results in the set {0} of cardinality 1.

|N ∖ N_>1| = 2

|N ∖ N_>0| = 1

N_>1 has the same cardinality as N_>0, but the sets are still different. -- Ivan (talk) 08:30, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

I understand the math of what you're trying to say, but I don't get your intent. Is there a part of the article you'd like us to change? The excerpt you've included doesn't contradict what you've said here. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 16:56, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

ikanreed, my point is that Craig is not wrong in using the word undefined instead of indeterminate. The expression “ℵ₀ − ℵ₀” can be left undefined precisely because there is more than one solution to the equation ℵ₀ + α = ℵ₀. The article, on the other hand, states: “[…] in transfinite arithmetic, infinity minus infinity is indeterminate. […] This is fundamentally different than saying that something is undefined, which means that there is no solution to the problem.” -- Ivan (talk) 17:04, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I see. I guess it depends on the claims he's trying to make, whether the distinction we're making is relevant. Indeterminate is the more precise term, if he goes on to make allegations that anything is possible as an extrapolation of the rule, then yeah, this is an appropriate nitpick. But it could also be a pointless "well, actually". With the amount of context we have in the article, it's hard to say. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:25, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Here is more context: “Dr Millican says that infinity minus infinity is not defined in transfinite arithmetic – there’s more than one solution to the equation. And that is precisely the problem when you try to translate this into the real world. You can slap the hand of the mathematician who tries to subtract infinity from infinity, but you can’t stop someone from taking away a certain number of coins. And the contradiction is that you have identical quantities, you subtract identical quantities, and you come up with non-identical results.”

So he says himself that there is more than one solution rather than no solution. “It’s indeterminate, not undefined!” is unnecessarily pedantic. But there is another problem with his argument: his assumption that it is contradictory to get different quantities. -- Ivan (talk) 17:51, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

That's a stupid metaphor on Craig's part, but we do seem to be mischaracterizing his statements given that. What do you propose we do? ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:11, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Replacing the text by something like what I have written above; there is also a blog post by Reasonably Faithless on the topic: Infinity minus infinity. The articles also states: “[…] Craig treats the concept of infinite sets as being equinumerous, a view that was popular among mathematicians prior to the proofs of Georg Cantor, but which have [sic] been universally abandoned among all mathematicians.” But his book The Kalām Cosmological Argument covers several transfinite cardinals, he simply refers to ℵ₀ as infinity sometimes. -- Ivan (talk) 18:53, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Debate between Craig and academic philosopher Kevin Scharp

Kevin Scharp vs. Craig video Kevin Scharp is highly respected (and sometimes feared) within the academic analytic philosophy. It's unfortunate that there is so far no content on the debate between Craig and Kevin Scharp. I was a graduate student at OSU (where he taught) and he sort of kicked Craig's ass. I am not kidding when I say Scharp is smart. We'd about piss ourselves when we talked with the guy, who (if I remember correctly) was also a speed reader with photographic memory. The problem is that the majority of the audience seemed too dumb to understand what Scharp was saying, so they just laughed at him while the intelligent ones remained civil. If you watch the debate on YouTube, you can see the same kind of bullshit in the YouTube comments as well. I don't have time to re-watch and write anything right now, but it'd be great if anyone wants to start. Repugnant Conclusion (talk) 16:41, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Repugnant Conclusion. I really cannot bear slogging through more of Craig’s sophistry on video, so I’ll just link to the transcript of the debate on Craig’s website (the one thing I like about Craig is the number of detailed transcripts that make it easy to follow his recycled BS).

It would seem that Craig took a page from the presuppositionalist book (he’s usually more circumspect/sly/subtle about this) and outright claimed that the fact that maths can be used to describe physical phenomena is evidence of God’s existence... Jesus wept, Craig appears to be channeling such bottom feeders from the shallow “intellectualist” apologist barrel as Sye Ten Bruggencate:

”God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world. [...] Mathematics is the language of nature. But how is this to be explained? If mathematical objects are abstract entities causally isolated from the universe, then the applicability of mathematics to the physical world is, in the words of the philosopher of mathematics Mary Leng, “a happy coincidence.”

”On the other hand, if mathematical objects are just useful fictions, then how is it that nature is written in the language of these fictions? The naturalist has no explanation for the uncanny applicability of mathematics to the physical world. By contrast, the theist has a ready explanation. When God created the universe, he designed it on the mathematical structure which he had in mind.”

”We can summarize this argument as follows:

1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence.

2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence.

3. Therefore, God exists.”

Even for Craig, that’s a seriously silly argument, coupling the old Paley shtick with Bruggencate-like circular “I’m right ‘cause I’ve defined it so!”-nonsense.

I think that Scharp did well not getting sucked into Craig’s rhetorical shell games and instead highlighting a more nuanced (and accurate) picture of ”21st century atheism” than the tired old caricatures Craig loves to trot out.

It surprised me that Craig accepted to change his usual format to one where he and Scharp only had one “presentation round” each and then went onto a head-to-head dialogue format, since Craig always try to spend most of his time doing more or less pre-scripted rebuttals and tends not to sound as impressive when he has to think on his feet. The latter effect is clearly evident in the dialogue where his attempts to frame the debate generally fail and Scharp is able to avoid having to debate on Craig’s terms.

I also think that Scharp did well at the end by pointing out the following:

”I think that the existence of God is not a good explanation. It doesn’t predict anything, it doesn’t retrodict anything, it doesn’t explain anything. The existence of God doesn’t make the probability that there would be moral duties any higher.”

That objection pretty much applies to all Craig’s (and his fellow apologists’) “therefore God”-arguments. ScepticWombat (talk) 18:41, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

As for the audience, I’m not sure they were that much taken (in) by Craig (not that it matters one wit, anyway) and remember that the Veritas Forum that hosts these circuses are likely to supply a certain amount of the audience as well.

Also, I have a suspicion that a lot of the fawning commenters on Craig’s videos are either out and out groupies (from the Veritas Forum or the fundie schools he teaches at) or at least from the choir that Craig preaches to. If Craig was really that convincing and had such good arguments, I would expect a lot of conversions, concessions etc. among those who did not already agree with him. Also, note how many of the user names and icons are clearly from the kind of Christians (i.e. more or less literalist fundamentalists) that Craig appeals to.

I do have one criticism of Scharp, though, and that is his claim (one that gets echoed far too often and on which Craig has built his image) that Craig has ”got some great philosophical skills, he’s a talented system builder, which I admire, and he’s done a tremendous service to the atheist movement by trouncing most of our heroes and raising the bar on both sides.” Craig has done nothing of the sort. He has simply combined academic sounding artful obfuscation and aggressive high school debating tactics together to craft a more respectable and intellectual sounding apologetic sales pitch than we are used to among his kind of literalist fundamentalists. I really wish Craig’s opponents would stop including this ritual courtesy, because it’s the image Craig uses to sugarcoat all his underhand tactics and BS arguments and make his brand of regressive fundamentalism seem intellectually respectable. ScepticWombat (talk) 19:07, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia

This section reeks of psychological projection, accusing Wikipedia of being partisan and biased, and frankly sounds a fair bit paranoid. It also doesn't jive well with the rest of the site's mockery of conservatives invoking Wikipedia's name for their Shill gambit. 69.60.33.176 (talk) 21:28, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I’ve already noted my concerns about the “axe grindiness” of that section in my sticky, unarchived post about the structure of the article (see above) and these criticisms of yours do substantiate those earlier concerns of mine.

However, when it comes to the allegation that the description of events at Craig’s Wikipedia page is paranoid, I’d suggest looking at the history of their Craig page and its accompanying talk page. It’s quite clear from these histories that Craig sympathisers have done their best to puff up his profile on Wikipedia, including teach the controversy style additions to the article on the B-theory of time. Fortunately, it seems that editors less fond of Craig, eventually adjusted some of the more obvious puffery and more or less excised Craig from the B-theory of time article.

As already noted, a problem particular to correcting Craig’s nonsense on Wikipedia is that he has found a niche in which to get his stuff published by “respected publishers”, which plays into the Wikipedia’s policy that has been lampooned as “rather a well-sourced error, than a unsourced fact”. It basically means that unless you can find some academic publication that has bothered to address Craig’s nonsense, the tendency will be to leave the former unchallenged.

One part of the Wikipedia section that I do think could be cut, is the whining about a link from their Craig article to ours. There is no reason why Wikipedia should be obliged to link to RW, even if our page does contain a rather thorough debunking of Craig’s “greatest hits”. ScepticWombat (talk) 09:19, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

A fair rebuttal, I just grow weary of some of the poor writing and hypocrisy on this site when it comes to religious topics. I can understand that there may be bias towards him on Wikipedia, but that's a far cry from a shill conspiracy the article was alleging, and it doesn't look any better on their part than when Alex Jones does it. But yes, your comment adds some more nuance to it. Cheers. 69.60.33.176 (talk) 19:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don’t think you’re using the meaning of shill gambit in the sense that it’s usually applied. As I pointed out, any perusal of the Wikipedia talk pages and earlier article versions pertaining to Craig and B-theory of time clearly documents the struggle between Craig’s fans and other Wikipedia editors.

Craig’s fans decisively lost that struggle on the B-theory of time article, for the simple reason that Craig’s ideas on this topic are without merit (which tends to be the case when you try to make your physics fit your apologetics), whereas the Wikipedia page on Craig himself simply became more anodyne (I guess as a compromise between puffery and criticism).

Identifying how and explaining why this came about has nothing to do with conspiracy and everything to do with the consequences of how Wikipedia works, as is already stated in this RW article (roughly, issues of fandom and sourcing with a dash of wiki lawyering). ScepticWombat (talk) 09:27, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

"Craig's work has a tendency to be fodder for his apologetics"

Is this not the case for any academic's works, that their work will also support other things they write on/speak about?--82.40.43.68 (talk) 20:10, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

No not necessarily. I am sure some of my profs have certain political or religious views but they don't write about them because it's not relevant to their area of expertise. My phil of science prof had a lot of opinions about alt-med but he didn't write essays on it because his area of expertise was in the philosophy of cognitive science. Also it depends on the field. Chemists and Biologists aren't exactly publishing articles on their social views. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 20:40, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

The main issue is that it seems that all of Craig’s “philosophical” work is mainly designed to bolster his various arguments for God and/or the premises of those arguments.

Craig’s support of the A-theory of time, already cited in the RW article, is perhaps the most blatant example. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Craig’s dogged defence of A-theory is simply a way to salvage his (version of the) Kalām cosmological argument, as it doesn’t work under the B-theory, which, by contrast, seems to be the interpretation generally held by physicists/cosmologists who actually study these things from a scientific perspective.

Hence, Craig is simply picking and choosing whatever scientific or philosophical ideas that (he thinks) are compatible with his apologetics and thus essentially starting with the conclusion “therefore God (did it)”. Basically, he start from his apologetic conclusion and then cherry picks whatever he thinks will help bolster it, regardless of the merit of the ideas or them being incoherent or mutually incompatible with each other.

This is also why I don’t consider Craig to be an actual serious scholar, let alone the kind of “professional philosopher” he always brag about being, since he has openly admitted that he will never accept anything that runs counter to his religious views. ScepticWombat (talk) 21:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Moral Relativism

The article currently has this passage: "Craig says that "objective" moral values exist. That statement is arguable because different cultures have often different moral values, so moral values are relative. For instance, some cultures value dogs as pets, others don't; some cultures denounce gay sex, others find it acceptable; and so on and so forth". This passage should be removed for the following reasons. First, (meta-ethical) moral relativism is a fringe view in contemporary ethics (and is not the only, or the most popular, way of resisting moral objectivity (Craig's account of objectivity just involves mind-independence, which is pretty mainstream stuff; his commitment to dependence on God's will is much more dubious)), and there is good reason for this, so endorsing relativism is rather dubious. Second, resisting Craig's argument require interpreting "moral values are relative" as a meta-ethical commitment, not a descriptive one, but the inference of the meta-ethical thesis from the descriptive premise that different values can be found across different cultures is invalid. It's perfectly conceivable that there are objective moral facts and some people (or even all people) are wrong about them. Important arguments have also been brought forward that the extent of cross-cultural ethical disagreement is far less than commonly thought. Third, taking meta-ethical relativism seriously, this passage, as written, plausibly commits our article to the thesis that some cultures correctly condemn gay sex, because this is being used to justify the claim that "moral values are relative," and, again, this claim would not be relevant if interpreted as merely descriptive. Fourth, the point is not important to challenging Craig's argument, because Craig's account is weak on other grounds, and the bulk of the section is devoted to attacking greater weaknesses in his account, like his commitment to Divine Command Theory. That is, his P1 is much weaker than his P2. The problem with the quoted passage ("on the atheistic view...") is that it badly misrepresents the options available to atheists; Craig is presupposing, without argument, that God is necessary to motivate ethics. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 00:18, 23 March 2023 (UTC)