"God & Cosmology" Sean Carroll vs William Lane Craig Comments Enabled!!!

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1. Carroll's moment  comes when he answers the question posed from the audience member beginning at @2:19:58. After Carroll responds, Craig actually fumbles horribly as repeats the very flaws of a religious approach Carroll outlined in his answer!
2. WLC: 24:00
   SC: 43:59
   WLC: 1:04:30
   SC: 1:16:40
   WLC: 1:35:25
   SC: 1:43:50
   Q&A: 1:55:53
3. Carrol: Things in universe are different from things inside the universe. Ok, Dr. Carrol, so prove this statement.
4. William Lane Craig has a tendency to put these cosmological arguments to debaters who hardly have any knowledge in the field and make them look embarrassing. But this was a different ballgame altogether, this was debating an actual cosmologist and Sean Carroll absolutely humiliated him in this one. But the decency and civility both debaters showed is absolutely admirable.
5. Brad are my comments being flagged as spam?
6. + John Wick - John my comments aren't appearing when i'm signed out, so here's the reply to your last post.
   
   Ok, well sorry you get frustrated. You don’t think atheists get frustrated by people making comments like ‘atheism is wrong’, given the inherent fallaciousness of that statement? If you want I can be an asshole about this, if you want to be adversarial we can be. I’ll let you set the tone.
   
   So, first point, the fundamental question of why it makes any sense to question someone’s atheism. Here’s the problem – you are still confusing the fact and belief claim. Let me explain. Would someone be wrong to not believe in the holocaust? It depends ENTIRELY on what information has been presented to them. That is how rational thinking works. Its entirely rational to take a position of ‘I don’t know’ on a question of fact, even if after later information presents itself it turns out that question of fact turns out to be true. This is why I brought up the alien civilization on proxima centauri. We both agree it’s possible, right? But you haven’t been convinced. That’s it, end of story.
   
   What you are asking Veridian is to explain, specifically, why every single argument he/she has ever heard for the existence of god is unconvincing. I personally have been exposed to dozens of variations of the big three alone. Honestly, it’s just a silly question. It’s akin to akin asking you to explain why every conspiracy theory you ever heard was unconvincing. How many have you heard in your life?
   
   If you have good argument and evidence for the existence of god then present it. That’s how rational discourse works. If it is good, I promise you, I will change my position.
   
   Ok, second point. So I’ll take it that you agree WLC is not a philosopher, but a theologian? This is not an ad hom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) because you appealed to WLC’s background in philosophy directly as justification for his viewpoint on the wider issue. You then said that I obviously didn’t know his education background. That’s not ad hom but simply a question of fact pertinent to his competence and expertise which you previously appealed to.
   
   Third point, begging the question. I’m sorry Wayne but that is a load of crap. Let’s just go over this: you claimed SC was making several logical fallacies. I asked you to explain which ones. You answered begging the question. When I gave you the definition of question begging and explained that SC’s argument simply doesn’t meet the definition, you respond by saying you don’t care about the ‘fancy terminology’. If it doesn’t meet the definition, then it’s not a logical fallacy Wayne. Now I agree, this is one of Sean’s weaker arguments, but it is not begging the question.
   
   Yes, all of us have a core set of fundamental beliefs which inform our wider critical apparatus, and the way Sean views the nature of theism and a theistic god does indeed form the assumptions upon which his model is based. This is why this argument is generally weak because these assumptions can easily be violated for one reason or another. However, the existence of those beliefs does not make such a methodology fallacious, and it certainly does not mean he is question begging. For this to meet the definition of question begging, Sean needs to effectively insert, implicitly or explicitly, a non-existent god into his model. That he does not do Wayne, any way you slice it. (Anyway, wouldn’t the same stand true for WLC and the Kalam???).
   
   Yes, every body of knowledge has philosophical underpinnings. So what? SC never came close to saying “philosophy is useless because we have science”, especially ALL philosophy applied in ANY context. Are you building a straw position here? The point is in areas of observation science must supersede philosophy and metaphysics. Obviously this would not apply to areas such as epistemology.
   
   Sean has debated an actual philosopher before (who is a theist), unlike this crap with WLC it was an interesting conversation, not a one sided beatdown. If you are interested;
   
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKUEAfKGm58
   
   Fourth point, presuppositions. Again I have to disagree with you here Wayne; if I remember correctly I never said a presupposition was not a type of assumption, only that the assumptions made in the philosophy of science are not presuppositions. Reality is not presupposed in the manner that the existence of god is presupposed in presuppositional apologetics i.e. there is no other choice.
   
   Scientific epistemology acknowledges the possibility that objective reality is not real and that it cannot be proven, but essentially proceeds with the exploration of that objective reality anyway. I guess a better way of putting it is the actual existence of objective reality is immaterial to science, because not only is it impossible to perfectly determine its existence, but there is literally no subjective difference between an objective reality we can explore and an identical subjective reality we can explore. Thus, objective reality is not really presupposed, and even saying it is assumed is imprecise.
   
   Fifth point, nothingness. Ok, so I think you’re still not getting me here. Let me spell it out. By making the statement ‘something cannot come from nothing’ you are clearly and unavoidably appealing to nothing as if it is an object or phenomena, you obviously just don’t realise it. There are no other choices Wayne. Lets use some examples:
   
   ‘a’ cannot come from ‘b’
   
   A ‘frog’ cannot come from a ‘tree’
   
   A ‘star’ cannot come from a ‘teapot’
   
   ‘thunderstorms’ cannot come from ‘rational inquiry’
   
   ‘something’ cannot come from ‘nothing’
   
   The only reason any of those statement make sense is because they obey the law of identity. The last one though, it appeals to nothingness as an object or phenomena, just like all the others. For this statement to make any sense at all you need to define what ‘nothingness’ is rather than what it isn’t. If it isn’t anything at all, then you can’t appeal to it as if it was a thing. That makes statements like ‘something’ cannot come from ‘nothing’ nonsensical. Do you get me?
   
   The other major flaw in your reasoning here is you aren’t acknowledging the fact that time is an emergent property of the universe. When you make statements like ‘we have no evidence of things popping into being’ (which we do BTW) and applying that to the universe you are implicitly assuming some larger spacetime where causal relationships are possible. But that is literally impossible unless we are part of some other universe, which would just move the scale up one notch.
   
   Without space and time causal relationships are impossible becasue without a distance in time to separate events there can be no directional relationship between said events, just as without distance in space dimensions discrete objects are impossible. What this means is your entire logical framework of causality, which you and WLC are applying to the universe as a whole, are actually emergent properties of the universe itself. Without space and time dimensions there can be no logical absolutes, no causality, no ‘things’ ‘coming’ from ‘somewhere’. Thus to even talk about a universe ‘popping’ into existence is a nonsensical statement because it implies some ‘place’ where this happened. But the existence of ‘places’ is contingent upon the existence of spacial dimensions.
   
   What this means is even if we apply the now, reasonably outdated, standard big bang cosmological model of a ‘start’ to the universe 13.7 billion years ago (inflationary cosmology leads us to multiverse models, many of which are ‘eternal’ in a traditional sense), such a universe would still effectively be eternal because ‘time’ is an emergent property of the universe itself. Without a larger spacetime it makes no sense to say the universe is finite in time because there is no external volume in which it can be measured. Do you get me here?
   
   That’s the problem with the kalam and other Aristotelian lines of argument – they make fundamental category errors by applying emergent properties of the universe to the universe itself.
   
   http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Category_mistake
   
   You make the same category error by applying the law of causality to the existence of spacetime (which requires some wider spacetime), the conservation of energy to the universe as a whole (the universe has zero net energy content BTW), and even our old friend the law of identity which requires spacial dimensions. All of this, it all comes FROM the universe, it thus cannot necessarily be applied TO the universe. You with me?
   
   Think of it this way - imagine you were an artificially intelligent character in a video-game, say GTA4. And within that game the universe had certain rules, like specific weapons, clothes or money just reappearing at specific points. Given that experience of objects simply appearing in the same spot over and over, you may be tempted to apply the same logic to the game universe itself, assuming the game universe just kept reappearing in a single spot, just like the things within the game do. But that would not be the right way to think about how computer games come into existence, becasue the fact that a MP5 keeps reappearing under the bridge is a property of the laws which govern the actions of things within the game. Those laws DO NOT apply to the game itself.
   
   The truth is, the game was developed in Rockstar studios.
   
   Put simply, without a spacetime there is no causality, and without a universe there is no spacetime, so you cannot appeal to causality to justify the existence of spacetime, or the universe.
   
   See what I mean?
7. W against T, reference required.
8. -8dB input would have been great...
9. Fuck this crap and his "heavenly farter"
10. This gets a subscribe.
11. William Lane Craig got his arse well and truly spanked here. All his tried and tested, some might say outmoded and outdated, arguments were torn to shreds by Carroll. The spectacle of Craig attempting to argue cosmology with Sean Carroll is like Lady Gaga attempting to argue harmonic theory with Mozart!
12. I love how they call it "apologetics", they've got a lot to apologise for!
13. If i was asked to debate a christian, i would refuse. Cause there's no debate. Anybody can come up with irrefutable conditions so if you wanna believe them, i can't do anything about it. So what's the point? These debates are not about anything practical. It always falls down purely to some logical arguments. But logic is meaningless on its own. It's stupid. Its the same thing if i was to argue that i have an invisible immaterial dragon in my garage. So what?
14. If we assume that "laws of physics" and "god" are the same entity - then even theology has some (twisted and weird but nevertheless quite consistent) sense. God is essentially anthropomorphization of Nature.
15. P1) Everything which begins to exist has a cause.
    
    P2) The universe began to exist.
    
    Conclusion) The universe has a cause.
    
    This first premise cannot include "The Universe" or it would be CIRCULAR.
    That means that the first premise refers to the parts of the universe
    and not the whole.
    
    The second premise refers to the whole which would be "The Universe".
    
    The conclusion:
    
    Fallacy of Composition
    
    The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part).(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition)
16. Althought i did not watch WLC's arguments ( only watched Carroll from around 50 onwards), it would seem to me that Carroll did not effectively falsify the fine tuning argument, or really make an impressive presentation at all, anyone could see this.What i dont get is the whole natheist thing when it comes to using this grandiose language ( He destroyed him, smashed, shredded, butchered, ect) as if really definitive arguments were made ( could be inmaturity ,an attempt to ease guilt, maybe a lack of understanding the actual arguments not sure.) , now each side has their arguments but to think that such a complex matter (enough to pit academics from all areas , in countries all around the World),is solved by watching a debate on youtube, denotes a true lack of understanding in regards to the subjects at hand.
17. Rebuttal five of fine tunning5) More on the multiverse hypothesis, which is till in development, so not yet valid in as a scientific fact i would believe.
18. Furthermore on point 4.Same strawman i pointed earlier, he pretends to set a false dichotomy, claiming physics makes models of the universe and theology doesnt.As i said earlier theology DOES NOT pretend to substitute nat.sciences descriptive work of the physical universe, it just places a metaphysical agent Outside spacetime as the causal entity of the latter ( assuming a finite spacetime and the probable existence of metaphysical realities such as logic, esthetics, morality, conciousness & mind, experiential phenomena, etc. All still unreachable to natural sciences).
19. Fourth rebuttal of fine tunning4) finally a real counterproposal.However he promotes a multiverse ( only an eternal model would pose an inconvinient to theism), sounds interesting , but still speculative ( at present all we have as basis is standard bigbang cosmology), so you could answer that the same way he would "we still dont know".
20. Thrid rebuttal of fine tunning3) another " we dont know".