Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum

You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



4/13/2016 10:52 am  #11


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

I found Dr. Scharp on the YouTube comments for the video and I asked him to come here. 

 

4/14/2016 9:24 am  #12


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

First post :-)

I had 2 primary objections to Dr. Scharp's arguments...

1. Weak Theism, Belief and Epistemology

I don't think that Dr. Scharp's position on epistemology amounts to a meaningful critique of Craig's apologetic, even if we take at face value his numbers (which he selected for the purpose of discussion and not specifically to defend).

Let's presume weak-belief/knowledge is in the 51%-80% range and 81%+ range would be strong-belief/knowledge.

Craig's case, as he describes many times is a "cumulative case". Let's imagine a different scenario, where a person is investigating a crime scene. In the crime scene we find 5 pieces of evidence. The first is a fingerprint, but it is only a 60% partial print. The second is a hat, but it is missing 40% of it. The third is camera footage, but the right 1/3 is blurred out, revealing only 67% of the assailant's face. The fourth is a mole on the assailant's arm, but only 53% of it is viewable. And finally, the fifth is a footprint, but only 57% of it remains. Suspect A matches all of these, being seen in pictures with a hat in the past resembling the portion they found, having a footprint consistent with the portion they found, so on and so forth.

All of these, under Dr. Scharp's assessment, would be "weak beliefs" (which I think is correct), but would it not be right of us to think that 5 weak beliefs might combine in a cumulative case to fairly strong belief that Suspect A is the culprit? As long as the evidence is independent of one another, this seems intuitively right. 

I think this is because we make a big mistake when we think of the probabilities behind belief in something like the LCA. A 30% confidence in the LCA is a 30% confidence that it shows God exists, not a 70% confidence God does not exist. To that effect, we should actually consider any confidence in the arguments to be points, so to speak, on a scoreboard which keeps the balance between reasons for God's existence and reasons against God's existence. On one side of the board we might put the Problem of Evil, or the Coherence of God. On the other side we might put the Cosmological Arguments or the Moral Arguments. It is this balance to which we ultimately apply the 50-80, 80-100 epistemic measures which Dr. Scharp proposes. I think it is perfectly reasonable to make those measurements at that juncture, but not before. 

Thus, Craig's cumulative case, even if each individual argument only supports weak theism, could combine to produce a strong-theistic belief.

2. Divine Psychology Argument

This one, I think, is just bizarre. It looks something like this. Let's return to a crime scene analogy.

1. Agent X is accused of performing an particular act.
2. Evidence Y1 shows no one else could perform the act than Agent X.
3. Evidence Y2 shows that performing this act unintentionally is nearly impossible
4. Evidence Y3 shows the act did not have to happen.
5. Agent X died after the act, and there are no previous records about him
6. We don't know Agent X's psychology
7. We don't know the probability he would do it based on his psychology.
8. We can't conclude Agent X intended to perform the Act

This seems to be obviously false. Let's take, for example, the argument from Fine Tuning. Let's grant both Craig and Scharp their initial premises. Craig says that chance and necessity are ruled out, and the odds are huge (something to the magnitude of 1/10^10^100). Scharp says that we have no idea of the probability that God would want to create a universe. Does it follow then that we must drop the argument altogether? 

Of course not. Just like the example above, we don't need to know the psychology to demonstrate that it is highly plausible that the agent is responsible for the act. We might "fill in the blank" so to speak with an even probability, or we might ignore it because we don't know it, or maybe we would give a "benefit-of-the-doubt" so to speak and set it at reasonably improbable, but we wouldn't put it in as 0% and call it a day. Such a position would be an extreme skepticism that would call into doubt any argument regarding agent responsibility. If a gunman died at the scenes and didn't leave an explanation for his or her attack, would we simply have to withhold judgement as to guilt because we don't know his/her psychology? Even if we have video evidence which is nearly 100% certain?

I think these are the 2 biggest holes in Dr. Scharp's presentation. I would love to hear his thoughts.

 

Last edited by rjonesx (4/14/2016 9:35 am)

 

4/14/2016 12:29 pm  #13


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

Timotheos wrote:

And some of the attacks were almost obviously calculated political moves to discredit him with the audience (I'm looking at you completely off topic same-sex adoption criticism, as well as, to a lesser degree, Craig stated skepticism on macro-evolution)

Actually, Veritas asked us to explicitly say why the debate mattered for practical issues. I followed those instructions. Craig did not. Moreover, my criticism of intelligent design was part of an objection to his uses of scientific results in his arguments (e.g., Kalam) while at the same time rejecting entire sciences (e.g., Biology). That's just cherry-picking at its worst.
 

 

4/14/2016 12:38 pm  #14


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

@KevinScharp FWIW, I didn't mind those attacks. Craig values consistency very much in his philosophical/theological positions (as do I). If Dr. Scharp could show inconsistencies, he could press Craig on what makes it applicable in one place and not in another. All's fair in love, war and debate :-)

Last edited by rjonesx (4/14/2016 12:39 pm)

 

4/14/2016 2:34 pm  #15


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

Timotheos wrote:

One of my biggest beefs was his insistence that miracles "violate" the laws of nature, which I think was supposed to be a Humean inspired criticism, but given on the grounds of a absolutist theory of the laws of nature, which is something that just is not compatible with Hume's critique of miracles.

I mean really, I just cannot understand why people always get so huffy about this; it is no violation of the laws of gravity, for say, for Christ to walk on water, because we can clearly appeal to a cause which can apply a force to keep him up, or to change the density of water locally, or to simply stop concurring with the earth's exercising of its casual power to pull Christ down, etc.

Yes, under normal circumstances this is not an option, because physical things presumably cannot do these things without being able to be observed doing so, and hence we can empirically rule out natural causes, which is precisely why when we see this happen, we shift to a supernatural cause.

So I'm not at all impressed by this objection.

Okay, good. I think you're right to raise this issue -- I think it's where a lot of the action should be.
First, I said nothing about laws of nature. I talked only about scientific theories. Here's what I said. Scientific theories have tons of evidence for them -- way more than any evidence for resurrection. And, moreover, resurrection is incompatible with our best scientific theories. So we should accept an explanation for the events mentioned (empty tomb, etc.) that is compatible with our best scientific theories.

The distinction between natural laws and scientific theories is crucial here. I don't know what the natural laws are because I don't know what results the sciences will eventually come up with. I do know what our best scientific theories are. I don't know whether resurrection is incompatible with natural laws. I do know that resurrection is incompatible with our best scientific theories. So the distinction matters, and I was very careful about it in my presentation and the discussion.

Let's look at the last point -- resurrection is incompatible with our best scientific theories. I really like your Jesus/gravity example. I think you're right that Jesus walking on water is not a violation of the classical theory of gravity (Newton). That's a very nice point. Is it yours or do you have a reference for it?  Still, it won't help you much because there are other scientific theories that cause more problems for you. For example, is Jesus walking on water consistent with general relativity? I don't think so. If Jesus had walked on water then the spacetime around him would not have been  warped in the way predicted by general relativity. And general relativity does not have any exception for supernatural causes. Another example is that the resurrection violates the conservation of mass/energy. Many scientific theories are formulated in terms of symmetries or conservation principles, and these require certain physical quantities to be distributed in a certain way throughout the universe and to change in certain ways over time. God intervening by lifting Jesus to heaven in the resurrection would violate some of these principles.

So, why aren't I just saying that miracles are impossible? I'm not saying that. Again, I'm talking about scientific theories -- we have tons of evidence for them, but they still might turn out to be false. I can imagine a situation that I would say is a miracle. And it would also be a counterexample to some of our best scientific theories.

I hope that helps.
 

 

4/14/2016 4:42 pm  #16


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

I don't understand how Prof Scharp can simultaneously maintain a sort of scientific closure- 'walking on water isn't in accords with our theory so it couldn't have occurred' -and simultaneously maintain an anti-reductivist stance 'science is not adequate for explaining all aspects of experience.' You can't be Hume/Ayer and Rorty at once.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

4/14/2016 6:25 pm  #17


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

KevinScharp wrote:

Timotheos wrote:

And some of the attacks were almost obviously calculated political moves to discredit him with the audience (I'm looking at you completely off topic same-sex adoption criticism, as well as, to a lesser degree, Craig stated skepticism on macro-evolution)

Actually, Veritas asked us to explicitly say why the debate mattered for practical issues. I followed those instructions. Craig did not. Moreover, my criticism of intelligent design was part of an objection to his uses of scientific results in his arguments (e.g., Kalam) while at the same time rejecting entire sciences (e.g., Biology). That's just cherry-picking at its worst.
 

I can understand the evolution attack, because you're right that Craig needs to give a principled reason why he thinks he can accept mainstream physics, but reject mainstream biology; that was why I qualified it with "to a lesser degree".

The same-sex adoption one was the one that really struck me, since it only very remotely connects with Craig's arguments and principles; even if you are a Theist, and even if you are a Christian, even a Southern Baptist like Craig, one would still have to determine whether or not they might permit such an activity, so it only very remote part of Craig's world-view, and is a position that a non-Christian, and even a Athiest, could hold.

I don't really want to push this point too much more though, since it's a minor thing, and I would rather deal with more substantitive criticisms in this forum; I just mention it because there is a significant percentage of the especially young population, both pro and con, whose minds just shut down when they hear the words same-sex marriage, and I would rather those people keep their minds turned on for such an educative debate.

Last edited by Timotheos (4/14/2016 7:57 pm)

 

4/14/2016 7:05 pm  #18


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

rjonesx wrote:

First post :-)
1. Weak Theism, Belief and Epistemology

I don't think that Dr. Scharp's position on epistemology amounts to a meaningful critique of Craig's apologetic, even if we take at face value his numbers (which he selected for the purpose of discussion and not specifically to defend).

Let's presume weak-belief/knowledge is in the 51%-80% range and 81%+ range would be strong-belief/knowledge.

Craig's case, as he describes many times is a "cumulative case". Let's imagine a different scenario, where a person is investigating a crime scene. In the crime scene we find 5 pieces of evidence. The first is a fingerprint, but it is only a 60% partial print. The second is a hat, but it is missing 40% of it. The third is camera footage, but the right 1/3 is blurred out, revealing only 67% of the assailant's face. The fourth is a mole on the assailant's arm, but only 53% of it is viewable. And finally, the fifth is a footprint, but only 57% of it remains. Suspect A matches all of these, being seen in pictures with a hat in the past resembling the portion they found, having a footprint consistent with the portion they found, so on and so forth.

All of these, under Dr. Scharp's assessment, would be "weak beliefs" (which I think is correct), but would it not be right of us to think that 5 weak beliefs might combine in a cumulative case to fairly strong belief that Suspect A is the culprit? As long as the evidence is independent of one another, this seems intuitively right. 

I think this is because we make a big mistake when we think of the probabilities behind belief in something like the LCA. A 30% confidence in the LCA is a 30% confidence that it shows God exists, not a 70% confidence God does not exist. To that effect, we should actually consider any confidence in the arguments to be points, so to speak, on a scoreboard which keeps the balance between reasons for God's existence and reasons against God's existence. On one side of the board we might put the Problem of Evil, or the Coherence of God. On the other side we might put the Cosmological Arguments or the Moral Arguments. It is this balance to which we ultimately apply the 50-80, 80-100 epistemic measures which Dr. Scharp proposes. I think it is perfectly reasonable to make those measurements at that juncture, but not before. 

Thus, Craig's cumulative case, even if each individual argument only supports weak theism, could combine to produce a strong-theistic belief.
 

I made basically the same point that earlier in the forum; assuming that each argument is founded on independent grounds, and each has at least a confidence of 51%, then, cumulatively, our confidence that at least one argument works is about 98.6%.

You can calculate this by finding the probability of its logical negation, and then subtracting that from 100%. Now we want to calculate the probability that 'at least one of the arguments is correct', which is the logical negation of 'all of the arguments are incorrect'. To calculate the probability that all of the arguments are incorrect, we take the negation of our confidence in each them, .49 in this case, and multiply it with itself for each argument we have, which is six. Hence, our confidence is equal to (1 - (.49)^6), or about 98.6%, well above the 80% threshold.

The caveat here of course is that each of the arguments needs to have an independent probability to each other, which I think is at least a plausible idea; they don't share any premises, and the justification for each of these premises seems independent enough as well.

 

4/14/2016 7:46 pm  #19


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

KevinScharp wrote:

Let's look at the last point -- resurrection is incompatible with our best scientific theories. I really like your Jesus/gravity example. I think you're right that Jesus walking on water is not a violation of the classical theory of gravity (Newton). That's a very nice point. Is it yours or do you have a reference for it?  Still, it won't help you much because there are other scientific theories that cause more problems for you. For example, is Jesus walking on water consistent with general relativity? I don't think so. If Jesus had walked on water then the spacetime around him would not have been  warped in the way predicted by general relativity. And general relativity does not have any exception for supernatural causes. Another example is that the resurrection violates the conservation of mass/energy. Many scientific theories are formulated in terms of symmetries or conservation principles, and these require certain physical quantities to be distributed in a certain way throughout the universe and to change in certain ways over time. God intervening by lifting Jesus to heaven in the resurrection would violate some of these principles.
 

AFAIK, the walking on water example is my own, although I'm sure somebody else has used it before.

I don't think I understand what you're getting at with the general relativity business; black holes are allowed to bend space-time, so why not God? Sure, general relativity doesn't predict such an action, but neither does it predict black holes either; it only implies details about what they would be like if we found them, and what to look for to verify their existence.

As for the conservation of energy, how does God's adding energy to a system, from outside the system at it were, violate the principle? Presumably, since we are going to have to look outside the universe to explain its origins, which is the creation of all sorts of energy, why can't we do so again at some time later on? How does this "violate" conservation laws?

I would also like to thank you for coming here and adressing some of our concerns; it's truly a pleasure to have you.

Last edited by Timotheos (4/14/2016 8:08 pm)

 

4/14/2016 9:59 pm  #20


Re: William Lane Craig and Kevin Scharp | Is There Evidence for God?

None of our scientific theories make reference to the activity to God, who is not an item in the natural universe, thus they cannot possibly be said to have any bearing on the exercise of his powers. Prof Scharp seems to have confused physics with theology. Nor either is this the objection that there are hidden ceteris paribus clauses in science, which Scharp attempted to parry before Craig could lodge it, but merely the claim that obviously on any normal conception of him, God is outside the realm of the natural sciences, and thus cannot be limited by any predictive constraints on the activity of nature. 


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum