Dr. Craig vs. Kari Enqvist: "Can the Universe Exist Without God?"

[Lawlessone777]

Fact, Dr. Craig claims the universe is fine tune. Fact, the universe is not fine tune. Fact, Dr Craigs re-uses a debunked arguement. This is what my post was about.

Now that I can post on something other than my phone I think it'll be easier for me to be clear. Here, Sequence, I think you're running into a bit of confusion. The universe actually is fine tuned for life. This isn't some kind of theistic conspiracy, the discovery of the fine tuned constants and quantities was an independent discovery by secular science. In fact if you read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time he lays this out quite plainly, as does almost every modern day physicist.

The fact is, they're crafting cosmological models which include this fine tuning in its' design so that we can explain it, they're not at all denying the existence of it. Theories of Cosmology which have been largely abandoned such as loop quantum gravity, quantum vacuum fluctuation, or cyclical models have fine tuning in mind, that's why they expand the probabilistic nature of randomly ordered universes in order to account for ours. They try for the "anything + infinity = anything" style of logic. Currently the darling theory is the multiverse hypothesis and superstring theory, which still posits 10 to the power of 500 varying universes on the cosmic landscape, not even close to doing away with fine tuning, and is largely unproven. On some grounds it's unprovable, so I really don't see where you're deriving this statement that Craig is using a "debunked" theory. At most atheists have tried to do away with the Fine Tuning Argument by either appealing to the anthropic principle, which is frankly just lazy philosophy, or this new attempt by Hawking to marry the quantum wave collapse with "top down" history into a sort of weird anthropic quantum principle which has been largely admonished as a philosophical argument, not scientific, and a bad one at that.

So again...don't really know where you're getting this idea from beyond your own need to attack Craig for his belief system.

Also your claim that there is no objective research that's been done into religions and their claims of miracles is plainly false, I honestly think you just haven't bothered to study this subject objectively. I highly recommend Lee Strobel's work as a good jumping off point, such as the Case for Christ, or the Case for a Creator. Also if you're looking into continuing to make the claim that there has been no objective historical study into the miracles of Christ I recommend the work of Mike Licona, or C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. These are all good jumping off points for study, which I suggest you do, as it seems you're hopping onto an apologetic board with a great deal of vitriol and condescension, but not much substance or study.

[Anthony]

Like the debate with Klemens Kappel, this one seemed like both speakers were on two different boats in fog. But I think the most radical position taken by Dr. Kari Enqvist was that the very question of the debate is meaningless. It seems like many atheist scientists simply hate philosophy. At least Dr. Enqvist and Peter Atkins do. No wonder for the past 50 or so years, there has been a large increase in Theist philosophers, and we are moving away from the old ways of Bertrand Russell and his gang of atheists who ruled Philosophy departments for the first half of the 20th century. I think Dr. Craig needs to seriously have a one-on-one debate with Daniel Dennett who is a philosopher and is trained in logic.

[FNB - Former non-believer]

Copleston wrote: Like the debate with Klemens Kappel, this one seemed like both speakers were on two different boats in fog. But I think the most radical position taken by Dr. Kari Enqvist was that the very question of the debate is meaningless. It seems like many atheist scientists simply hate philosophy. At least Dr. Enqvist and Peter Atkins do. No wonder for the past 50 or so years, there has been a large increase in Theist philosophers, and we are moving away from the old ways of Bertrand Russell and his gang of atheists who ruled Philosophy departments for the first half of the 20th century. I think Dr. Craig needs to seriously have a one-on-one debate with Daniel Dennett who is a philosopher and is trained in logic.

Though Dr. Craig has debated many philosophers trained in logic, but he did also have an exchange with Dennett, though it wasn't a traditional debate. The link for the audio is here, http://apologeticsorg.blogspot.com/2009/07/william-lane-craig-vs-daniel-dennett-on.html

[baranbaran]

hell no.....

[jayceeii]

What truly disturbed me was when I heard Enqvist saying we ought to abandon reason and rationality because of Quantum Mechanics. I've heard Kappal, Krauss, Hawking and Dawkins spout the same thing. They keep saying philosophy is dead, don't listen to philosophers, stop trying to reason with your mind, only listen to scientists and even then only the scientists that are atheists. What I'm seeing is reprehensible anti-intellectualism. They're saying, "Thinking leads to God, so stop thinking, let scientists do your thinking for you."

This is actually extremely interesting, because you have identified “controlling” behavior, that connotes poor mental models for the others in the world. It’s a general human fault hence going unnoticed, and the religions certainly gave no instruction regarding it! The controlling mentality can be seen especially easily in the theories of utopian schemers, whose systems in the end are treating the masses like automatons who will follow their individual will, instead of living persons who think and make their own decisions. In this case spotting a controlling mentality in Enqvist throws the rest of his thinking into question. When the mind forms poor mental models for others, in this case expecting them to stop thinking and only listen to scientists, it proves it is not a very logical mind.