Every Argument for God [Has Not Been] DEBUNKED! (feat. WLC)

In this video, I'm joined by Dr. William Lane Craig to respond to Stephen Woodford's video in which he purports to debunk every theistic argument in a mere 14 minutes.

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#Apologetics #RationalityRules #ExistenceofGod

[thecloudtherapist]

Dear Cam, please, please, please keep having WLC on as much as possible. He is a treasure! And we cannot record enough of this man's time. I want him preserved for all the generations to come and all those who are amateur philosophers or apologists.

[WilliamBrownGuitar]

Fabulous, and extremely educational. This is the sort of back and forth that we need more of. I really hope that Woodford responds to this and if so, please post it here.

[gingrai]

So proud of you Dr. Craig! Thank you for being so available! Thank you for putting this on Cameron!

[MrGustavier]

33:00 Cameron : "Have you heard of the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis ?"
W.L.C. : "No"

I applaud the honesty. I hope WLC familiarizes himself with it and comes back on the channel to give us his opinion on it !

[didimockets]

Mathoma has brilliantly refuted RR's arguments against St Thomas Aquina's unmoved mover. He also has a series of videos refuting atheists' most frequent objections against Thomism. Worth checking out.

[ceceroxy]

William Lane Craig is just the best, what an amazing guy. Always pleasant, willing to give credit to guys when deserved and criticize when needed. Just a brilliant man.

[ceceroxy]

How can anyone not like WLC, honestly one of the most decent gentile people I have seen, whether he was an atheist or an theist

[ceceroxy]

Torture for WLC would be watching an episode of the Atheist Experience, I think he would literally faint if he saw the level of anti intellectualism on the shows produced by the ACA,

[nathanaelculver]

3:24 *"Premise 1: I can conceive the greatest possible being"*

Given that Wolford will bring up Gaunilo's objection, it's fair to assume that Wolford is intending to address Anselm's ontological argument, not other versions. I was a bit disappointed that Dr. Craig leapt straight to Plantinga's modal OA, which Wolford wasn't even addressing.

Wolford's version of Anselm's first premise misrepresents it right out of the gate. Anselm never speaks of a "greatest possble being" (and hence Wolford's attempted parody fails immediately). Rather, Anselm asserts a "greatest _conceivable_ being". This distinction is crucial to the success of Anselm's OA.

[I will attach my own rendition of Anselm's OA to the end of this post. Please refer to it there.]

4:40 *"The ontological argument treats existence as if it's an attribute."*

This criticism may work against, say, Descartes' OA, but Anselm's does no such thing. Anselm argued, _Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re; quod maius est._ "If it exists in the understanding alone, it can be thought to exist also in reality, and existence in reality is greater."

Anselm's reply to Gaunilo is very enlightening here:

_It is a greater thing to exist both in the understanding and in reality than to be in the understanding alone. And if this being is in the understanding alone, whatever has even in the past existed in reality will be greater than this being. And so that which was greater than all beings will be less than some being, and will not be greater than all: which is a manifest contradiction._

First, at no time does Anselm ever equate existence _in solo intellectu_ with "non-existence". That is, he is not taking some idea in the mind and then slapping existence onto it as a property. For Anselm, existence even in the mind alone is _still_ a degree of existence. Therefore any being we conceive exists, regardless of whether it exists in the mind alone or both in the mind and in reality. Lurking in the background here is the scholastic notion of a Great Chain of Being, in which existence is not a binary (a thing either exists or it doesn't), but a spectrum from lesser to greater degrees of existence. As Anselm wrote in the _Monologiōn:_

_"If we think of some substance that is alive and sentient and rational to be deprived of its reason, then of its sentience, then of its life, and finally of the bare existence that remains, who would not understand that the substance that is destroyed, little by little, is gradually brought to less and less existence, and ultimately to nonexistence? If what is removed, however, respectively reduces a being to less and less existence, when added to it, in relevant order, it leads to greater and greater existence."_

Second, note Anselm's use of "whatever" in his reply to Gaunilo. He is not saying that any particular thing we conceive in our minds would be greater if that thing existed in reality; he is not, in other words, predicating existence of any particular being. He is saying that *_any being_* that has at any time, even in the past, existed in reality is greater than *_every being_* we can possibly conceive in our minds alone, because existence in reality is a greater degree of existence. In other words, the tiniest speck of dust would, if it had at any time ever existed in reality, be ontologically greater than that grandest of mountains or (in Gaunilo's case) islands that we could conceive _in solo intellectu._

It is not the case that Gaunilo (or Wolford's attempted parody) simply replaces "God" with "island" (or "presentation"). Gaunilo in fact does more than that: he replaced Anselm's formula _aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest_ ("Something than which nothing greater can be thought") with his own novel _aliquid omnibus maius_ ("that which is greater than everything"). Rather than defining God strictly in terms of _conception_ as Anselm did, Gaunilo's formulation attempts to define God in relation to existing things, making the difference between God and the created order nothing but a matter of degree, and thereby begging the question of God's existence in reality.

In other words, Gaunilo straw-manned Anselm's argument, and Anselm took him to task for it in his reply above, because _aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest_ is the crux of Anselm's argument, and entails that attempting to conceive of a greatest being that doesn't exist _in re_ (that is to say, only exists in a lesser degree of existence) is logically self-contradictory.

*ANSELM'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT*

_God exists, because the assertion "God does not exist" is logically incoherent._

*Premises*
1. _Defined:_ God is the Greatest Conceivable Being (GCB)
2. The GCB exists in our understanding.

*Disjunctive syllogism*
1. Either A or B:
* A : The GCB exists only in our understanding.
* B : The GCB exists both in our understanding and in reality.

2. Not A (by _reductio ad absurdum)._
a. To exist in the mind and in reality is greater than to exist in the mind alone.
b. So to conceive a GCB that exists only in the mind is to conceive a GCB that is not a GCB.
c. Therefore, A is logically incoherent.

3. Therefore, B.

*Conclusion*
* Therefore, the GCB exists in reality.
* Therefore, God exists in reality.

[huskydragon]

This was a pretty good response to Stephen overall, but I was disappointed to not see someone feeding grapes to WLC.

[Derek_Baumgartner]

Thanks for these - keep up the great work!

[Autobotmatt]

RR should stop using the word Debunked cause he's not doing that. He is more or less just giving old counter arguments.

[TheSpaniard-]

Great video again Cameron! I've been watching these videos and debates for years and it makes me wonder, do the internet atheists ever get anything right?

[michaelx]

Nice interview!! Is it just me or does the quality of Rationality Rules’ arguments go way down when his target audience are atheists? Like he made some good points in his debate with you but in other places it’s totally different.

[Ransomed]

Love Dr. William Lane Craig! The Lord bless you sir! And thank you CC for picking up the baton in a new era and contending for the faith!

[sunset.]

Dr.craig is my favourite non muslim philosopher whom I listen to a lot

[gristly_knuckle]

It's alarming, somewhat, how important Christianity is, and I credit most of that clout to Dr. William Lane Craig, whose incredible intelligence has driven this movement from fighting The Four Horsemen to forming friendships between important atheists and Christian apologists. A truly marvelous accomplishment. A terrifying omen for future prosperity, liberty, and the rights of men and citizens.

[skyahn]

19:50 perfectly articulated why the universe does not apply to being eternal. Thank you for this video!

[jimothynimajneb]

Love how Cameron brought WLC on to debunk what is essentially a joke video.

[donnadeau]

When an argument start with an "IF" assumption, "If god exist" and conclude with a "therefore" he exist...you also must repeat the assumption IF in your conclusion for it to be sound.