In a way, that's why I threw out my previous comment. Aside from the humor of it, I'm often confronted with my atheist friends telling me how bloody my religion is, like I'm going to force them to agree with me at gunpoint. I agree, Protestants and Catholics have spilled blood many times due to religious disputes. The Middle East is a mess of Muslim and Jewish clashes. I'm not denying that. It's pretty much out of my control. Out of my control like my ancestors who killed millions of Native Americans were out of my control (that would be the reason Columbus "discovered" America).

Does that need to fall on MY shoulders though? If I shout against this burning Koran bullshit, and the May 21 return of Christ bullshit, does that separate me from the crazies? It's been a constant headache for me to keep myself at a distance from them while still embracing the few ideas I think they have right. Christians attack Islam in the same manner, pointing to the extremists as the norm. Brian37 mentioned that Hitchens didn't strap a bomb to his waist or murder an abortion doctor. Those are extremists, not normal people. Pat Robertson, Terry Jones, Jerry Falwell. You can attack Jerry Falwell and his types all you want and the "reasonable, intelligent" believers will back you up. However, if you attack the people who go to church on sunday with absolutely no desire to burn a Koran, you just piss Christians everywhere off. Generalizations are just pretty much annoying. I think that is where Hitchens goes wrong. His focus is off. I doubt if anybody is going to say he is the most talented debator to walk the planet Just because I'm a christian doesn't mean I hate people, I'm pretty sure I like alot of people I disagree with. So by all means, show how incredibly nuts the fringe people are for starters and this christian will back you up. And do it before they start throwing nukes wildly about.

Well, enough rambling. Back to writing final papers.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8595&printer_friendly=1

Question:

Dr. Craig,

I have some questions about Reformed Epistemology and your view on the witness of the Holy Spirit as explicated in Question 68.

Following the lead of Alvin Plantinga, you try to argue that classical foundationalism is self-refuting because the criterion used by classical foundationalism ("only propositions that are self-evident or incorrigible are properly basic&quot for discerning properly basic beliefs and beliefs derived from properly basic beliefs is itself neither properly basic nor derived. You say it is not properly basic because, using classical foundationalism's own criterion, it is neither self-evident nor incorrigible. But your assertion that the criterion cannot be demonstrated by using evidence is a bit hasty. After all, you have not shown that the criterion used in classical foundationalism is incoherent; all you've shown is that we simply lack any evidence for it at the moment, but as you know, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And unlike the self-refuting criterion used in logical positivism, the one in classical foundationalism can at least be verified in principle. Furthermore, appealing to Reformed Epistemology to escape this does not help either because the criterion used by Reformed Epistemologists ("only propositions that are self-evident, incorrigible, or appropriately grounded are properly basic&quot is itself not properly basic and, using Plantinga's hasty reasoning, is not evidentially supported either. So Reformed Epistemology does not do anything to alleviate the problem. Given this, should not one also reject Reformed Epistemology as self-refuting as well?

Second, there are better criteria available than the ones used either by the classical foundationalist or the Reformed Epistemologist, particularly universal sanction. According to universal sanction, a belief is properly basic if it is pragmatically indispensable. The nice part about this criterion is that it allows for a type of evidentialism which avoids all of Plantinga's counterexamples. For instance, under universal sanction, memory beliefs, belief in the reality of the external world, belief in other minds, and so on, are properly basic because doubting or denying them would make living a normal human life impossible. We need these beliefs in order to live happy and fulfilling lives. Now interestingly enough, universal sanction effectively prevents any theistic beliefs from being properly basic, for it is pragmatically conceivable that one lives a happy life without belief in God. I think Sennett in spot on in his analysis here. The reason we accept belief in other minds, the external world, and our memories is not because we somehow "know" that they are true; it is all psychological, for we desperately want these beliefs to be true because we know that it would be impossible to live a fulfilling life without them. Now, Plantinga would probably say that universal sanction is self-refuting, but there are problems with that strategy as mentioned earlier. Would you now agree that universal sanction is superior to Plantinga's criterion?

Third, in the context of Plantinga's work, a properly basic belief is a basic belief that has not been attacked with any defeaters; once a defeater is given, though, the properly basic belief becomes simply a basic one. At this point, one can either relinquish the basic belief or hold on to it in the case that she can find arguments with which to defeat the original defeater, which would then restore the belief's proper basicality. On your view, though, the witness of the Holy Spirit is a properly basic belief AND an intrinsic defeater-defeater, so if someone were to offer a defeater to Christianity that you could not answer, would your belief in God be basic or properly basic?

Next, when you say that one is rational to believe in God on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit, do you mean rational in the sense pertaining to justification or warrant? If by "rational", you mean "justified", then you have really shown nothing. Muslims, Hindus, and atheists are all rational under this definition since they are within their epistemic rights. Nothing has been done to show that Christianity is true. On the other hand, if by "rational", you mean "warranted" in the Plantingian sense, then you need to explain why other properly basic beliefs that are warranted turn out to be false (like faulty memory beliefs).

It is worth noting that the relationship between properly basic non-theistic beliefs and their grounds are vastly different from the relationship between supposedly properly basic theistic beliefs and their grounds. There is always a certain correspondence between the content of an experience and the content of a belief grounded by that experience. For instance, my feeling of pain grounds the belief that I am in pain, not some unrelated belief like "evolution is true" or "a=a". However, according to Plantinga, experiencing guilt, happiness, and danger or reading the Bible serves as grounds for properly basic theistic belief. But surely you notice the disparity here, Dr. Craig! What Plantinga is asking us to do is to conclude, on the basis of a few emotions, that a necessary, eternal, self-existing, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, omnitemporal, unembodied mind created the universe out of nothing and regularly interacts with humans and has revealed himself to man in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of a virgin, performed numerous miracles, was crucified, descended into hell, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and now sits at the right hand of God, exists! The belief is so unrelated to its alleged grounds that one can only wonder how Plantinga gets away with this! Surely you don't believe that belief in the God mentioned above is solely grounded by a mere religious experience, right?

Finally, Plantinga's model presupposes that Christianity is true. Plantinga essentially is defending the proposition: If Christianity is true, then Christian belief is warranted (as explained by his model). But Plantinga never gives any support for the antecedent of that material conditional; he just says that demonstrating the antecedent is not his project. But if that is so, then Plantinga really has not shown much other than that de jure objections to Christianity fail. But I fail to see how his model shows how a Christian can rationally believe that Christianity is true. Do you hold to this view? You seem to argue in the opposite direction of Plantinga: If there is a witness of the Holy Spirit, then Christianity is true. Do you believe that THAT conditional is true?

Thank you,

Timaeus
Unspecified

SEE ALSO: 

http://brindedcow.umd.edu/236/sennett.html

I don't believe for a minute that William Lane Craig believes his own bullshit.

Not a chance.

I've watched enough of his debates. He's all about ego, and appeals to emotions, by insisting that atheists are nihilists.

He's an attention whore, and completely in his own little world when he debates.

It doesn't even matter who he debates, it's always the same argument.

He can't think on his feet worth a shit. When he gets outclassed, he starts preaching and incoherently waxing poetic about how loving and good god is.

He's really fucking weird...

I disagree - because I don't think that it is mentally possible to "believe" in something like this, unless perhaps you're a patient in a mental hospital. I believe that all Christians, even the die hard fundamentalists know that their beliefs are a lie - or at least know that they have no legitimate reason for believing in them. They just don't care, because they get some type of dopamine rush from playing make believe and lying to themselves and others - Christianity is really just a live-action role-playing game.

I know for a fact that they don't really believe any of it. Because if you ask fundamentalists about some other religion (ex. Scientology), they'll say something like "Oh sure. Some alien created the human race by dropping a nuke into a volcano trillions of years ago - that's absurd." If they're capable of understanding that that type of logic is absurd, then they are capable of understanding that their own "logic" is absurd too. They just don't care - no matter how much it seems like they really believe it, they don't - they lie to themselves and others on a daily basis full-well knowing that it's a lie and have no remorse about it.

Remember that old fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" - that's who Christians are. Even after the emperor found out that he had been fooled, he went out in public naked anyway pretending that he still believed it - because he'd rather make a fool out of himself then have to acknowledge the truth to himself.

such evil lasts longer than the vessel in which it was housed.

You and I are fully aligned, then.

That's exactly what I mean.

There's a definite 'detour' that they do in their thinking, when it comes to their 'beliefs', that disappears when contmeplating other religions. 

Just a cursory glance, and the determination that it's bunk.

Funny how dat works, huh?...

I believe he's authored something like 29 books.

And he's a 'professional' philosopher, which means he's paid to lecture and debate.

That enough 'cash' incentive and 'ego' payoff for a snake oil salesman?...