Craig and Komarnitsky

William Lane Craig posted a video on youtube attempting to rebut Kris Komarnitsky's theory about cognitive dissonance the origin of Christianity, as he articulated it in his book Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?

Komarnitsky responded to him. Boy oh boy. Craig brought up criticisms that Komarnitsky addressed in his book! And things get worse. Look at what Kevin Harris, the man interviewing Craig, had to say:

"I had no time to read Kris' book and was keying off an article on it. Bill hadn't read the book either; I rather threw it at him knowing he could address cognitive dissonance."

That's very revealing. Both of you think that you have the power to divine the contents of Kris' book, and on top of that, you demonstrate just what a sheep you are: You just know Craig will be able to address the issue at hand, even without knowing the facts yourself, and ironically not even realizing that Craig's fallacious rebuttals were addressed in Kris' book. Shame on you.

Addendum: Here's a real howler in Craig's video: About 7 minutes in Craig starts talking about how we need to put ourselves in the shoes of a first century Palestinian after his messiah has been killed. What would such a person do? They probably wouldn't say Jesus had been resurrected, they would probably get a new messiah or they would, in Craig's words from 8:05 to 8:15: "They could've spiritualized the messiah. Maybe they could've said, 'Well, Jesus is a spiritual king and his kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, despite his death, and therefore we can still believe in his messiahship in a spiritual sense.'

I know. And it's not as if there are any signs of that occurring in the New Testament. Oh. Except that there are; John 18:36: "My kingdom is not of this world..."

The rest Craig says is dead wrong, and if you don't know that already, I'm preparing a book which will deal with all of this in some detail.

The Bible Geek Aug. 27

Here's a transcript of a question I sent in to the Bible Geek which Bob Price read and responded to in the August 27 podcast about 52 minutes in:

"In Dennis MacDonald's book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark he puts forward the idea that as Mark wrote his gospel he imitated the epics of Homer but sometimes altered the story in such a way as to show how his values were different from Homer's. I think I've found an example in the gospel of Matthew where Buddhist scriptures (you read right!) are imitated with a twist in order to emphasize different theological values. Buddhism was alive and well in the Hellenistic world (Wikipedia has some good links and historical references on that) and there were apparently Buddhist missionaries in the Middle East/Mediterranean prior to the gospels. In the Buddhist scripture, (Jataka 190), there is a story about a disciple of the Buddha who begins walking on water but begins to sink after he loses his meditational trance. The point of the story is that you can do anything through focus. Contrast this with Matthew 14:22-33 in which a disciple of Jesus begins to walk on water but sinks when he loses faith. Point of the story: You can do anything through faith.

"I think the early Christians knew about the Buddhist story (it was likely present in the culture of the time) and imitated it but with their own change in order to show how their values differed from Buddhism. Though many others have noticed this similarity and Randel Helms has suggested borrowing, as far as I know I am the first one to recognize why it was borrowed. What sayest thou?"

By the way, you can now purchase Robert Price's Deconstructing Jesus and Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? for your kindle for under ten bucks each. Fascinating books.

Why No Posts?

Yep, it's been a month since I've posted anything. But I have a good reason: I've been working on a new book. I would say it's about 15% complete. Progress has been slow, but it should be good. Stay tuned for updates.

New PC

Okay, so I finally bought my own home PC (before I had been using ones at the library or at a friend's). So I'll be writing a lot more from now on! Also, my PC came with Plants Vs. Zombies. It is the most fun, addicting game ever!

The Kalam Argument is a Deepity

I'm sure most of you have seen or heard William Lane Craig's presentation of his Kalam cosmological argument. I think the argument is misleading to most people, as this argument is not one but two.

The first version is the one that Craig presents to lay audiences. It is highly misleading. Craig wants you to think that science has proven that at one time nothing existed, and that at a later point something existed, and this could only be explained by God. But that isn't true: there is no science at all that supports the idea that there was a time when NOTHING existed. In fact, even under the standard model of the Big Bang something has existed for every single moment of time (even though time itself doesn't stretch back for infinity).

The second version is the academic version. More or less, Craig argues that the first moment of time (and everything in it) must have some sort of reason for its existence (or cause) and of course by definition any cause for this first moment of time must be outside of time. And here's where we've opened up a huge can of metaphysical worms.

It's not obvious to me, or even to most people (I think?) that the first moment of time just had to have some type of nontemporal cause. So how can Craig argue that it does? To justify the notion that time's first moment had an atemporal cause, Craig appeals to intuition (which is surely no guide to matters so far removed from our experience, which is where we get our intuition) and to everyday experience (our experience of events always having a cause).

But our everyday experience is irrelevant to this issue, so say I. First, our everyday experience is that every event we know of was caused by another temporal event. Taken at face value this means an infinite regress, unless there is one or more special exceptions to this law of cause-and-effect. Suppose there is a special exception, some type of occurence that could happen without a previous temporal cause. Could this special exception also be without any cause whatsoever (even a timeless one)? If we're going to break one inductive rule (that every temporal event is caused by a previous temporal event) then why not break an artificial rule that doesn't really have any support? The artificial rule I speak of is the unstated premise that every event has a temporal or atemporal cause, which I find insupportable: we have no examples of atemporal causation. Using our everyday experience (and nothing more) would seem to make an uncaused event just as unique and just as seemingly unlikely as an event caused by a timeless thing.

And this is only the beginning of the problems with the Kalam. The Kalam assumes that an infinite past is impossible, but Craig's arguments for that are unconvincing, and, in any case, are refuted by his own philosophy of time:
http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2010/12/10/a-quick-and-dirty-rebuttal-to-craigs-argument-from-the-impossibility-of-an-actual-infinite/

Moreover, there's even a paper published by Quentin Smith called "Time Began with a Timeless Point" which argues for a nontheistic cause of the universe that is outside of time.

The Kalam, I would suggest, is dead.

The Carrier-Holding Debate

You can watch the debate between Christian apologist J.P. Holding and Atheist Richard Carrier here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/bensonshays

Holding is the author of The Impossible Faith and Carrier is the author of Not the Impossible Faith

Name That Bible Passage

I recall reading a story (I'm fairly certain from the Old Testament) which I have not been able to locate. If you can find any biblical passage which bears a vague resemblance to the following description, I'd be very grateful. Just leave a comment in the comment section. Here's the description:


God keeps a distance between himself and his people because God thought that if he dwelt among the people he might lose control of himself and lash out and kill them.


If you can name this passage, I'll owe you one. If you want me to post a link to your blog, I'd be happy to do it.