PZ takes on William Lane Craig:
“What's amazing here is that Christians are actually impressed with Craig's millimeter-deep, reason-free handwaving. Ha ha, you scientific smartie-pants, you can't use science to prove you're not a simulation on a computer of a brain in a vat that was created five minutes ago with false memories of your life, so therefore, Jesus. Never mind that science doesn't deal in proofs. Never mind that Craig's religion can't prove it either, except by blind obdurate asseveration. Never mind that those are all non-questions, non-issues, irrelevant sophomoric wanking.”Actually the question was from Atheist Peter Atkins: “Give examples of things that cannot be proven by science”. Sophomoric wanking? From Atkins? And the very first response from Craig was science itself: being presupposed on other unprovable axioms, science cannot verify its own validity.
PZ’s response is first an Ad Hominem Abusive (stupid Christians); followed by a Red Herring (“science doesn’t deal in proofs” – yes PZ, that is the point: science has limitations); followed by a Tu Quoque (Christians: you can't provide material evidence either); wrapping up with a Red Herring Denial (non-questions, etc - well, Lane didn't ask the question, he was answering the question which was asked by the Atheist).
“In science, we're used to incremental progress and revision of our ideas. Evidence is our currency, it's how we progress and it's what gets results. It is a category error, however, to think that the way to address free-floating word salad and flaming nonsense is to take the scalpel of reason and empiricism and slice into it, looking for definable edges. No, what you do is look over the snot-ball of self-referential piffle, note that it has no tenable connection to reality, and drop-kick it into the rec room, where the kids can play with it, but no one should ever take it seriously.”Reasserting Scientism as their religion, evidence as their dogma, and results being the Naturalist’s defining object, PZ asserts that anything else is self-referential without so much as a single shred of hallowed Evidence to show that this is the case. He denies any connection with reality (No First Principles need apply), and continues with his proud style of Ad Hominem Abusive, which actually is the purpose of the post in the first place, and last place.
Another URL for Craig.
3 comments:
Note that the link you provided is not to the clip PZ discusses, but to the entire debate with Atkins.
As an aside, here is an atheist's review of this debate:
"Atkins is more interested in lecturing about the nature and glory of science than in debating the existence of God. Atkins also does himself no favors by speaking with condescension."
From here.
Is that site suppose to be a joke? I see the highly fallacious stephen roberts quote under their title which is something a pop atheist would use....... They forgot the retarded "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you." that goes in front of that quote.
sunre,
Actually, commonsenseatheism is one of the very few level-headed atheist blogs around, although the owner is still prey to childish attacks on religion and nonsense like the quote at the top.
But you'll find a lot of very good interviews with smart theistic philosophers on there: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1911
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