Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “seek,” came with the email note, “Somebody called William Lane Craig argues something like this.” As one reader commented to the artist, “You’re not making me laugh, you’re making me grunt with resigned appreciation of what you’re making painfully clear.” And he called for more laughter. But I like this kind of strip:
viz.:
And here’s reader Pliny the in Between’s take, called “Reasonable and overwhelming evidence.” Yes, that’s WLC himself, of course:
Every time I read the name, “William Lane Craig” I cringe to the point of twisting my large intestine in knots.
You and me both.
There are very few people who I actively hate. He’s one of them. I think that the smugness is the problem.
WLC caused me to be born with my intestines in knots.
Sure glad that Graig is only giving us the reasonable faith. That unreasonable faith is so unreliable. Odd, the evidence for both is the same.
We do seem to have a sad batch of apologists among us. One longs for the good old days of figures like C S Lewis And G K Chesterton. Of course their arguments weren’t any better but they were much more entertaining (and could write stylish English).
Much worse than Craig for me is Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart. I was assured by a believer friend and several reviews that his 2014 book, “The Experience of God”, was the best book ever written defending the Christian faith. Who could resist that? So I slogged through the whole book (and it was a slog – apparently in Hart’s community denseness of prose style equals profundity) and my reaction was surprising even to me.
This is it? This is the best you got to offer? Really? I suppose that must be true. Oh well if this is the best book on apologetics ever written then that frees me from ever having to read any more. Now that I think about it maybe I should write Hart and thank him!
Heh. Believers whine about missing the good old-fashioned atheists like Friedrich Nietzsche. So where are the good-old apologists? 😉
Of course it does. I think this is a major element of the Bible’s success as a religious text. If it were clear, as easy to read and comprehend as the Harry Potter series, people would read it and comprehend it and realize that the emperor has no clothes. But since it’s difficult to read and relatively incomprehensible, people don’t actually see what it is saying clearly. Only a tiny fraction can even make themselves plow through it. That puts many people in the same position they are in with respect to a book on differential geometry and Lie groups. It’s either a deep book that is in some sense over their head, or it’s garbage. Authority figures, who seem to know some things you don’t, tell you it’s the greatest book ever, a really deep and meaningful tome that just reveals more and more with each re-reading. Simple insecurity often does much of the rest of the work.
I really think a lot of Christians think it makes others consider them more intelligent to have read something by WLC or DBH, just because it’s such hard going. If an argument sounds complicated, it must be right.
It’s like all the creationists who spout things like the 2nd Law, or say, “Why are there still monkeys?,” to support their argument. They think it makes them sound clever when the opposite is true to anyone who actually understands the arguments.
Veritas. Ite, missa est.
The oxymoron tour.
With less oxy … 🙂
Have watched loads of his debates, and while the opponent came from different angles each time, Carrier hit him on historicity, one guy from morality, Craig’s spiel was the same each time… it was weird seeing one of his points refuted but then seeing him use it again another time… The last debate I watched after Krauss took after him personally with righteous anger, was Sean Carroll’s, in which he showed Craig’s cosmological interpretations were completely unfounded… I wonder if he still has the same things to say in that regard…
Vic Stenger corrected WLC’s physics perhaps 15 years ago, at least. (IIRC) I think WLC has still not corrected his mistakes.
Not even a little surprising. Duane Gish used the same presentation for years, regardless of the circumstances (Michael Shermer has a very informative takedown in chapter 9 of his book Why People Believe Weird Things; the chapter is titled “In the Beginning: An Evening with Duane T. Gish”). Here’s the good part (Shermer was studying Gish’s other debates): “I noticed that regardless of his opponent, his opponent’s strategy, or even what his opponent said, Gish delivered the same automated presentation–same opening, same assumptions about his opponent’s position, same outdated slides, and even the same jokes.”
And the creationists who infest websites that allow open posting (I know GoComics the best), repeat the same nonsense over and over. Sometimes I’ll even take the time to refute it, and then state, “but you know what? The next time this comes up, you’re just going to post the same thing again.”
If it makes you feel any better(?), they are even worse in person. When I was a missionary, one of my colleagues had only one topic of conversation: hell (I thought he was an asshole even when I was his colleague). Many christians will inject the same comments or bible verses into any conversation, regardless of the content or context of the conversation.
“… Craig’s spiel was the same each time… it was weird seeing one of his points refuted but then seeing him use it again another time…”
Just like the current GOP frontrunner.
I cheer the apologetics tour on. It will make many converts… to atheism.
I’d had my doubts about religion for a long time, but it was an apologetics class that really pushed me over the edge. When smart people taught classes giving the *best* reasons for believing that their lifetime of study had come up with, and those reasons were garbage or even obvious lies (!), the jig was up.
You make a really good point about the failure of apologetics.
When I was in the process of losing the Christian beliefs I’d grown up with, I listened to lots of “existence of God” debates. Most of them featuring William Lane Craig on the theistic side.
I have to admit: WLC, more than any other debate participant, convinced me to be an atheist.
Me too, your story sounds exactly like mine.
Is it just me, or is the text impossible to read on that banner from WLC? (The stuff that begins “Always be prepared …”)
Craig expects you to recognise the reference (1 Peter 3:15) from the legible words and to fill in the rest from memory.
I see the Jesus & Mo cartoon differently from Jerry’s email friend. I think it’s beautifully funny, from Jesus’ crown of thorns he wears instead of a turban, to the philosophically brilliant barmaid who bests these two world-class “theologians.”
Jesus and Mo and the the fallacy of understated evidence.
I agree with you, Jerry. I like those sorts of cartoons. As to “The Reasonable Faith” tour it seems like a contradiction in terms.
I have reasonable faith in science and scientists (since I am not one), but that’s because of the scientific method.
One (of the many) things which I love, and appreciate about Our Pliny’s panels is, the subtle (or not) use of “Zen circles” upon additional eraser marks, hinting at– “Our ‘New’ model includes…’exactly’… how god did it……..”
Brilliant riposte to William Lane Craig on God and the Universe from Sean Carroll
Type in front of it – Im trying to stop it embedding https://www.
Hope it doesnt embed
youtube.com/watch?v=X0qKZqPy9T8