@enoch, I didn't see your response to me since you didn't "reply" to me, or "message me" ("@Trancecoach"), so I'm just seeing this now:

> you argue like someone who has found religion.

What is this, then, if not ad hominem? What has religion got to do with economics in this context? I'm willing to change my mind, if you can show me the flaws in my argument.

> and its not just you that never wants to address the dark side of capitalism.

So, please tell me what didn't get 'addressed?' Did I not respond to every point in your post? Where are your replies to my reply?

> disciples of free market capitalism never want to talk about their deformed child
> locked in the upstairs bedroom.out of sight..out of mind.

Again, what wasn't addressed? Free market capitalists love to talk about free market capitalism. Ok. So are you stuck on this such that you're unable to read/respond to my response?

Seems to me that you're projecting, because while you say that my responses are like a 'sermon,' this portion of your post actually sounds like a sermon:

> every system has its flaws.
> both positive and negative.
> and no system is a rigid single dimension but rather varying layers of slight
> differences.
> this includes every political and economic system thought of or just living in the
> realm of dreams.
> it is through discussion with people we may disagree in which new ideas can breed
> and grow.
> this was my ultimate goal in talking with you.
> instead i get a sermon.
> hope has two daughters.
> anger and courage.
> anger at the way things are,and courage to change them.
> i havent had a beer in ten years.
> gonna go grab me a beer or two.
> what a silly,sad old man i have become.
> old men should stop dreaming.....

Let's not degrade the level of discourse to ad hominem or sob stories. If you need help, ask for help. But don't blame me if you relapse. We are all accountable for our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

> old men should stop dreaming

Dream all you want, but don't expect everyone else to take your dreams seriously just because you say so. (Why not address any of the points I made in my response?)

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the
average voter." ~ Winston Churchill

I'm at a loss as to what response I can give you that would 'appease' your sensibilities? As far as I could tell, all of your questions were addressed. But you ignored my reply, and went back to "no one wants to talk about it" or whatever. So, what can be said?

It seems like you don't really want to "debate" or "converse" or whatever. If I refute your arguments, then you interpret that as meaning that I don't want to talk about it. Did I get that right? That doesn't make much sense to me. If not, please explain what I am missing here.

Also, what does it matter if you are old or young, or a dreamer or not, in terms of getting to the truth about socialism and capitalism?

> but you are blinded by dogma.

If so, why not show me what part of my argument is dogmatic or not epistemologically sound?
For example, what specifically about the right to and/or preference for non-aggression is 'dogmatic?' I don't like being bullied, so does that make me dogmatic? What about the impossibility of economic calculation under any sort of socialism is 'dogmatic?' And how so?

If someone doesn't understand calculus, they might call it 'dogma.' But if you understand it, then you can look at the equations and see for yourself if they make mathematical sense (or not). Was Galileo's contention that the Earth orbits the Sun dogmatic? What about the assertion that the Sun orbits the Earth, was that dogmatic? What's the difference?

> it is through discussion with people we may disagree in which new ideas can breed
> and grow. this was my ultimate goal in talking with you.

This is all very nice, but did you bother to find out what my 'ultimate goal' in talking to you was? Or is it all about yours?

Some-but-not-all people get upset when you point out how their beliefs do not correspond to the facts. Socrates was sentenced to commit suicide and Galileo died under house arrest.

I won't say whether or not this is true, or applies in this instance.

> every system has its flaws. both positive and negative. and no system is a rigid
> single dimension but rather varying layers of slight differences. this includes every
> political and economic system thought of or just living in the realm of dreams.

This, in itself is a dogmatic statement.

Look, man. I like you. I appreciate your comments, your earnestness, and willingness to engage our discourse. I also appreciate your respect and appreciation (although I can't say I'm sure how I've earned or deserved it). You've apologized for what seems to me to be ad hominem and I appreciate and accept your apology. I, too, apologize if you seem that I've been terse or avoidant in authentic engagement in dialogue with you. But in keeping with the points and arguments themselves, I think we'll both be much better off in terms of learning and growing and avoiding going off-track or off-topic into commentary about the messenger as opposed to the message.

^ You can make all of that make sense by simply shifting your epistemological position to the only ones which truly make sense i.e. phenomenology &/or perspectivism.

To rephrase that in less impenetrable terms:
"Materialism" (or in your case I assume "Scientific Materialism") that is to say 'matter is primary', from a philosophers POV is a deeply flawed assumption. Flawed because there appears to be not one experience in human history that did not occur entirely within the mind.
When one see's say a Dog, one only ever experiences the images and sensations occurring within ones mind. You don't see the photons hitting your retina, only the way your mind as interpreted the data.

However the opposite position "Idealism" (mind is primary) is also fundamentally flawed in the exact opposite way. If our minds are the only "real" things then where exactly are they? And how do we even derive logic and reason if there is not something outside of ourselves which it describes? etc. etc.

Philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre' got around this by defining a new category, "phenomena". We know for certain that "phenomena" exist in some sense because we experience them, the categories of mind and matter then become secondary properties, both only existing as definitions we apply retrospectively to experiences. i.e. stuff happens and then our brains kick in and say "that happened because of X because in the past X has preceded similar experiences" or "that thing looks like other examples of Y so is probably Y".

The problem then is that this appears to come no closer to telling us what is objectively happening in the universe, it's more like linguistic/logical housekeeping. The phenomenologists and existentialists did a superb job of clearing away all of the old invalid baggage about how we try to describe things, but they did little or nothing to solve the problem of Kants "nouminal world" (i.e. the "real" stuff that we are experiencing by simulation in our minds).

Its stumped philosophers for centuries as we don't appear to have any way to ever get at this "nouminal" or "real" world we naturally assume must exist in some way. But....

I reckon ultimately one of the first western philosophers in history nailed the way out 3000 or so years ago. Pythagoras said "all is number" and due to the work of Euler, Riemann and Fourier in particular I think we can now make it stick. (yeh its turning into an essay sorry )

Without wishing to go deep into a subject you could spend half your life on; Fourier transforms are involved in signal processing. It is a mathematical means by which spatio-temporal signals (e.g. the vibration of a string or the movement of a record needle) can be converted with no meaningful loss of information into frequency (analog) or binary (digital) forms and back again.

Mathematically speaking there is no reason to regard the "signal" as any less "real" whether it is in frequency form or spatio-temporal form. It is the same "signal", it can be converted 100% either direction.

So then here's the biggie: Is there any reason why we could not regard instrumental mathematical numbers and operations (i.e. the stuff we write down and practice as "mathematics") and the phenomena in the universe they appear to describe. I.e. when we use man made mathematical equations to describe and model the behavior of "phenomena" we experience like say Physicists do, could we suggest that we are using a form of Fourier transform? And moreover that this indicates an Ontological (existing objectively outside of yourself) aspect to the mathematical "signals".

Or to put it another way, is mathematics itself really real?

The Reimann sphere and Eulers formula provide a mathematical basis to describe the entirety of known existence in purely mathematical terms, but they indicate that pure ontological mathematics itself is more primary than anything we ever experience. It suggests infact that we ourselves are ultimately reducible to Ontological mathematical phenomena (what Leibniz called "Monads").

What we think of as "reality" could then perhaps be regarded as non dimensional (enfolded) mathematics interacting in such a way as to create the experience of a dimensional (unfolded) universe of extension (such as ours).

(R = distance between two points)
Enfolded universe: R=0
Unfolded universe: R>0

Neither is more "real", they are simply different perspectives from which Ontological mathematics can observe itself.

"Reality": R>=0

I've explained parts of that poorly sorry. Its an immense subject and can be tackedled from many different (often completely incompatible) paradigms. I hope at the very lest I have perhaps demonstrated that the Holographic universe theory could have legs if we combine the advances of scientific exploration (i.e. study of matter) with those of Philosophy and neuroscience (i.e. study of mind & reason itself). The latest big theory doing the rounds with neuroscience is that the mind/consciousness is a fractal phenomenon, which plays into what I've been discussing here more than you might think.

Then again maybe you just wrote me off as a crackpot within the first few lines "lawl" etc..

I do know a little bit about philosophy. For instance, epiricism is theory of epistemology, which is itself a branch of philosophy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

Therefore empiricism is a philosophical position within epistemology. The main problem with empiricism is called the problem of induction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Because empiricism relies upon inductive reasoning, it makes certain presuppositions, such as the uniformity in nature. Unfortunately, this leaves no justification for its truth claims beyond circular reasoning. For instance, if I were to say that the sun will rise tomorrow, I could only justify this by its past performances since there is no certainty the future will be like the past. Therefore, my knowledge claim says that the future will be like the past, because of the past, which is circular reasoning.

As far as great thinkers go, if the reason that you're here is to come to know God personally, and you miss it, how could you be considered a great thinker?

Epistemological issues seem so central to everything. Within the libertarian devotion to reason that Chomsky has praised, two camps seem to be at odds with one another, in a kind of in-house brawl.
One camp holds the empiricist skeptics who also happen to favor scientific materialism (like Penn Jillette and James Randi and some others you may not have heard about, or maybe you have) and the other camp holds the natural law axiomatic-deductive philosophers who don't outright dismiss homeopathic medicine, for example, and who question flouride in the water.
We can broadly see at least seven different positions. One writer I enjoyed a bit in college, Robert Anton Wilson, seems to have accepted empiricism in conjunction with intuitive-mysticism as valid sources of knowledge but not axiomatic-deductive reasoning. He wrote a short piece on his opposition to natural law in "Natural Law and Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy." I don't think he developed his opposition thoroughly. He devoted more to his writing to oppose scientism (like double-bind dogmatic empiricism) with a whole book, "The New Inquisition."
Another position is that of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist followers who accepted neither intuitive-mystical knowledge nor much empiricism, but only (or mostly) axiomatic-deductive reasoning.
In my opinion, a stronger view accepts all three and tests theories against all three.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
'nuf said.

Evidence for its existence would have to be logically derived, because it is by nature not physically provable. This is similar to how our mathematical models are the new tools of science because we no longer have the proper sense to make since of the world. In that same way, having physical evidence of something non-physical isn't giving dualism its proper shake. At a certain point in epistemology, you run out of ways to "show" things empirically. Investigation can only be in the realm of thought and logical deduction and as a result will provide the range of possibilities instead of the actual details, this is the proper setting for dualism...a logical possibility that would resist any internal investigation.

He swindles us a bit on the thinking computer bit, because it still doesn't address that main problem of thinking not being representing in pure physical interactions. Atoms bouncing around doesn't always cause thinking, so what is thinking if it can't be explained by sets of atoms bouncing around? How do disjointed sets of brain activations result in a single consciousness? This kind of spooky "thinking at a distance" effect is still one of the more baffling parts of the mind and where thinking arises. If this spooky thinking at a distance is happening, why is it limited to just the spooky motion of neurons within your own brain, why not the motion of atoms in the sun? If your brain can be thinking and disjointed, what is thinking...or more importantly...where is thinking happening!?

It also doesn't explain if thinking is a result of brains like we have them. Could a machine ever be made to think? What is thinking? Computers process information in a very similar respect to our own, but they aren't thinking when they are, are they? I don't think so! A study on how humans think isn't a study on thinking itself, just a kind of thinking...if other things than brains can think and there isn't a really good way to probe thinking itself because you are always going to be thinking like a human and not thinking like all the possible types of thinking that could exist. He makes this exact point with robotic technology advancing, we don't understand the limit of physical reality to know the limits of this end. To that end, you can't EVER know ALL the physical properties via empirical investigation so you can never know the ends of robotic technology, and perhaps the same could be said of thinking, you never will know if there isn't another way that thoughts could be formed with a physical understanding any more than you could with a duelist. Logical investigation can give you the range, just not the specificity he demands of dualism, and the same goes for materialism.

"Less opportunity of progress"? Only if we're having an argument with the deluded intention of convincing the other person of our specific viewpoint. (As I said in that other discussion, I'm super excited that we're going to Solve Abortion, right here on The Sift.) If we're not afraid to describe what we believe and why, then discourse is likely to strengthen our understanding of our own position, even if we discount entirely the possibility that we may gain new insight from the other parties involved.

Sure, the cognition\consciousness rabbit hole swirls right down into "metaphysical and epistemological" unknowns and becomes the equivalent of mental masturbation at that point, but that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable. And you certainly stated your view on Mind with the conviction of someone who feels pretty confident about it.

So if you'd rather not, ok, but I'll leave the door open, like so:

I had intended to leave my views on cognition and consciousness (and why I describe them as illusive and scarcely-understood) out of the abortion thread, but they ended up surfacing anyway. Essentially, I think the "ability of a candidate to engage with that process" is a good test, but it's only useful for the individual engaging in it. In my view, an outside observer isn't going to be able to tell with any degree of certainty, because the human brain appears to have everything it needs to behave like a conscious being even in the absence of Mind.
Picture the protagonist in the video for Metallica's "One" as an example on the other extreme (possessing of Mind but unable to communicate it).

I have to say that however reluctant I was to participate in one of the many public abortion debates that recur continually without really going anywhere, but felt it would be indecent to allow that discussion to unfold without some token objection raised against common delusions, I'm even more reluctant to talk one-on-one where there's still less opportunity for progress.

One reason these kind of debates, not just on abortion but any political or social topic, don't advance is that they concern questions of applied ethics that really belong very late in our philosophical development. It's as futile for adherents of varying ethical theories to clash on single issues as it is for travellers to row at a crossroads about which way they should go when they all set off from different places, following wildly differing maps, with compasses that all point in different directions. Why not agree which way is north first?

There's so much metaphysical and epistemological groundwork to be done before a sound consensus can be reached. I say 'sound' because with broadly binary questions there will appear to be a lot more agreement than there really is.

So rather than go on a trip with you I'd prefer to tell you where to start. You have to resolve subjectivity (you say that consciousness is "illusive and scarcely understood" - ultimately that's true of everything, which is the fundamental problem; I did give you a definition, in fact - perception and understanding, cognition and identity) and choose the fewest and most basic axioms on which to construct a nominally objective philosophy. That's where the debate belongs; what should those axioms be and what proceeds directly from them?

If you want me to give you a way to distinguish between mind and not-mind, the ability of a candidate to engage with that process would be a pretty good indication.

In reply to this comment by ReverendTed:
I wanted to continue this discussion, but it's going off in a different direction, so I figured I'd bring it here onto your home turf. You've obviously traveled this road before, but I'm coming along for the ride this time. (Road trip!)

We'll start here and see where this takes us: What's your reasoning for saying that a baby (or someone with a cognitive disability, or hell, an animal) is not Mind? I know where I'd like this to go, but I'll let you drive.

Ayn Rand's Influence on Alan Greenspan
In The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan describes the influence that Ayn Rand had on his intellectual development.

Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life. It hadn't taken long for us to have a meeting of the minds -- mostly my mind meeting hers -- and in the fifties and early sixties I became a regular at the weekly gatherings at her apartment. She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent -- we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor.

But she had gone far beyond that, thinking more broadly than I had ever dared. She was a devoted Aristotelian -- the central idea being that there exists an objective reality that is separate from consciousness and capable of being known. Thus she called her philosophy objectivism. And she applied key tenets of Aristotelian ethics -- namely, that individuals have innate nobility and that the highest duty of every individual is to flourish by realizing that potential. Exploring ideas with her was a remarkable course in logic and epistemology. I was able to keep up with her most of the time.

Rand's Collective became my first social circle outside the university and the economics profession. I engaged in the all-night debates and wrote spirited commentary for her newsletter with the fervor of a young acolyte drawn to a whole new set of ideas. Like any new convert, I tended to frame the concepts in their starkest, simplest terms. Most everyone sees the simple outline of an idea before complexity and qualification set in. If we didn't, there would be nothing to qualify, nothing to learn. It was only as contradictions inherent in my new notions began to emerge that the fervor receded.

One contradiction I found particularly enlightening. According to objectivist precepts, taxation was immoral because it allowed for government appropriation of private property by force. Yet if taxation was wrong, how could you reliably finance the essential functions of government, including the protection of individuals' rights through police power? The Randian answer, that those who rationally saw the need for government would contribute voluntarily, was inadequate. People have free will; suppose they refused?

I still found the broader philosophy of unfettered market competition compelling, as I do to this day, but I reluctantly began to realize that if there were qualifications to my intellectual edifice, I couldn't argue that others should readily accept it. [...]

Ayn Rand and I remained close until she died in 1982, and I'm grateful for the influence she had on my life. I was intellectually limited until I met her. All of my work had been empirical and numbers-based, never values-oriented. I was a talented technician, but that was all. My logical positivism had discounted history and literature -- if you'd asked me whether Chaucer was worth reading, I'd have said, "Don't bother." Rand persuaded me to look at human beings, their values, how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they think and why they think. This broadened my horizons far beyond the models of economics I'd learned. I began to study how societies form and how cultures behave, and to realize that economics and forecasting depend on such knowledge -- different cultures grow and create material wealth in profoundly different ways. All of this started for me with Ayn Rand. She introduced me to a vast realm from which I'd shut myself off.

From The Age of Turbulence, pp. 51-53. Omissions from the text are shown with bracketed ellipses. All other punctuation and spelling is from the original.

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/turbulence.html

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:
Y'know, your concept of absolute nothingness doesn't actually exist, insofar as we can show it to exist, right? I mean, how would we? Material existence is what there is.

Yours is an abstraction, a theological/philosophical concept of the human mind, a thought experiment, in no way amenable to actual experiment or observation.

This assumes that there ever was or is such a thing as "absolute nothingness".


Directing you to a general reply to this, here:

http://videosift.com/video/Richard-Dawkins-and-Lawrence-Krauss-Something-from-Nothing?loadcomm=1#comment-1443305

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:
I also don't see how positing a complex being as the cause of a supposedly simple beginning simplifies matters. At fucking all. You're simply slyly inserting god just beyond reach of humanity's current epistemological horizon. This begs the question, well, where did your god come from? It's a superfluous and unnecessary (not to mention completely evidenced) addition to the regress and reeks of special pleading/wishful thinking. It's crass and obvious and, quite frankly, fucking stupid.


I'll let John Lennox answer your questions:



>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:
I won't even address the arguments from DNA and fine-tuning, as the mental gymnastics required to leap even to the most generic of gods from either just blows my mind.


I didn't say they would necessarily prove any specific God as true, but rather, they are evidence that the Universe was created by a higher intelligence. It is more circumstantial evidence than direct proof, but establishing either would be a death blow to materialistic naturalism.

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^eric3579:

Blah, blah, blah... start watching at 11:30.
>> ^Deano:
I was wondering when you'd show up.
As for something from nothing look up quantum electrodynamics.
You obviously haven't watched this splendid video or have even a basic grasp of physics.
I covered these in my response to Gallowflak.

Y'know, your concept of absolute nothingness doesn't actually exist, insofar as we can show it to exist, right? I mean, how would we? Material existence is what there is.


Yours is an abstraction, a theological/philosophical concept of the human mind, a thought experiment, in no way amenable to actual experiment or observation.

I also don't see how positing a complex being as the cause of a supposedly simple beginning simplifies matters. At fucking all. You're simply slyly inserting god just beyond reach of humanity's current epistemological horizon. This begs the question, well, where did your god come from? It's a superfluous and unnecessary (not to mention completely evidenced) addition to the regress and reeks of special pleading/wishful thinking. It's crass and obvious and, quite frankly, fucking stupid.

I won't even address the arguments from DNA and fine-tuning, as the mental gymnastics required to leap even to the most generic of gods from either just blows my mind.

The cave only contains what you bring with you.

Sadly that video was dead so I couldn't see it. I would like to ask how you actually go about verifying spirituality.

Spirituality may be a real experience, but that does not mean that it is actually real. Paranoia is a real experience too.

Faith is a virus in many ways (obviously not biologically), but it acts as one. That said. you can say that for any meme.

Twisting religion and/or faith for "evil" is easy - anything can be twisted. The fundamental problem is that at the very core, religion is, well, bad. It's detrimental for the human race. We would be in a better place without it. By no means perfect, other factors are at work, tribalism, fanaticism, greed, etc. but nonetheless, it would be a better place, because you could not justify your evil actions through a supreme being. Do you realize how dangerous it is when someone is absolutely convinced they are right? Skepticism is a healthy attribute in a benign society. Spirituality (moreso religion and faith) is detriment to that.

When people argue "oh, look at all the culture and art that religion inspired", I think that's a bunk argument. The art and culture is there in spite of the religion smothering it. The reason all the classic art is about religion, is because churches leeched the money of everyone and therefor were the only ones who could pay for great works of art. If Catholicism had not had a stranglehold on Europe for some 1000 years, the art of the whole period would have been far more varied and fantastic.

I'm ashamed of my fellow man not growing up to face what's really out there, because it's crazy enough as it is without lunacy on top of it.
>> ^jonny:

>> ^gwiz665:
Spirituality is a hoax.
Faith is a virus.
Spirituality is a real, verifiable human experience. There are many paths to having such an experience, some of them involving religion, ritual and/or psychoactive drugs. However much we might disdain the belief in some bearded man in the sky as the source of such experiences, it would be absurd to deny their existence, power, or importance. Religion provides the most accessible path for many people.
I'm not sure what you mean by that second sentence. Do you mean faith in general, i.e., belief in something of which you have no direct knowledge or evidence? Or do you mean faith in the existence of Jehovah, the divinity of Jesus, or some other specific religious doctrine? I'd rather avoid getting into an epistemological argument, but the fact is that everyone relies on faith to a greater or lesser extent. More importantly, though, is just how useful faith can be. No one would argue that it can't be twisted to serve "evil" ends, sometimes without the twister or twisted even being aware of it. But to disregard the usefulness of faith entirely based on its misuse and abuse is ridiculous. It's like telling people not to have sex because of the potential negative consequences.
When I look at religion, I don't understand why it is blamed for so many of the atrocities humans have committed upon each other. The deeper cause is (fundamentalist) tribalism, and it comes in many forms - religious, ethnic, geographic, ideological, etc. All of these have been used as "psychic levers" to inspire people to act in ways they never would otherwise. Even in a hypothetical parallel world in which religion and belief in gods doesn't exist, all of the horrors of which humans are capable would still be found. I'd like to think the artistic output inspired by religion and faith would have other sources as well, but I'm not completely certain of it.

>> ^gwiz665:

Spirituality is a hoax.
Faith is a virus.

Spirituality is a real, verifiable human experience. There are many paths to having such an experience, some of them involving religion, ritual and/or psychoactive drugs. However much we might disdain the belief in some bearded man in the sky as the source of such experiences, it would be absurd to deny their existence, power, or importance. Religion provides the most accessible path for many people.

I'm not sure what you mean by that second sentence. Do you mean faith in general, i.e., belief in something of which you have no direct knowledge or evidence? Or do you mean faith in the existence of Jehovah, the divinity of Jesus, or some other specific religious doctrine? I'd rather avoid getting into an epistemological argument, but the fact is that everyone relies on faith to a greater or lesser extent. More importantly, though, is just how useful faith can be. No one would argue that it can't be twisted to serve "evil" ends, sometimes without the twister or twisted even being aware of it. But to disregard the usefulness of faith entirely based on its misuse and abuse is ridiculous. It's like telling people not to have sex because of the potential negative consequences.

When I look at religion, I don't understand why it is blamed for so many of the atrocities humans have committed upon each other. The deeper cause is (fundamentalist) tribalism, and it comes in many forms - religious, ethnic, geographic, ideological, etc. All of these have been used as "psychic levers" to inspire people to act in ways they never would otherwise. Even in a hypothetical parallel world in which religion and belief in gods doesn't exist, all of the horrors of which humans are capable would still be found. I'd like to think the artistic output inspired by religion and faith would have other sources as well, but I'm not completely certain of it.

>> ^Kofi:

You sir are a solipsistic windbag.
Now seeing as you don't derive your meaning of words from convention, fact or history you can take that to mean what ever you like.


I assume you mean to say that I have explicitly taken the epistemological position of denying the availability of objective knowledge of other minds or an external reality, in the mode of Gorgias.

Or were you using solipsism in exactly the way you've been telling me I shouldn't use fascism?

It's only fallacious if I'm actually making an argument, which I wasn't. Just personal comments on the man's work.

I didn't go into specifics simply because of time, but if you like, I can give you a brief rundown of what I find objectionable about his work.

The KCA: Craig seems to think that the Kalam Cosmological Argument is a very strong argument for theism, but it has numerous weaknesses. Craig argues for the impossibility of an actual infinite, whether in terms of a series in time, or of an infinitude of physical objects. His arguments in this regard are spectacularly weak. He believes, for instance, that the Hilbert's Hotel paradox shows that an actual infinite is absurd. This is not what the paradox shows, however--it only shows that an actual infinite would behave in unintuitive ways, breaking apart properties of numbers that we normally find together. Moreover, Craig provides no good reason to think that the first cause would have to be personal. He assumes that only a person could cause something to come from nothing, but doesn't back this up with any sound arguments.

Religious Epistemology: Craig asserts that philosophical arguments are neither necessary nor sufficient to have justified belief and genuine knowledge of the truth of Christianity--the light of the Holy Spirit is enough. He says this of himself as well, and is thus committed to his belief in Christianity regardless of any arguments that might be presented. He thus declares himself impervious to any argument that might vitiate Christianity--this is a profound philosophical failing. To declare that no conceivable argument can convince you away from your position is to declare the entire philosophical enterprise almost entirely purposeless with regard to that question.

The Resurrection: Craig uses Bayesian probability theory to argue for the likelihood of the resurrection, claiming that when the calculation of prior probability includes a belief in the existence of God, then the resurrection will be probable--and thus, the rejection of the resurrection by atheists just comes down to a dogmatic rejection based on a previously held belief. Craig is not the first to make this argument; Richard Swinburne first advanced it in the 70's. It is, however, a very bad argument. It only works if the "God" in question is in particular a Christian God to begin with. Not just any God will do, or the resurrection of Jesus is hardly more likely than the epiphany of Krishna or the revelations to Mohammad. But the specifically Christian notion of God was developed only out of belief in the resurrection in the first place. Thus, Craig's argument is largely circular.