Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Craig-Lowder Debate?


I found the following post in my Drafts folder; it appears I never finished writing the post before I became inactive with blogging for over 5 years. At the outset, I want to make two points regarding this post so that it is put into the proper context.

First, I am posting this now solely to clear out the backlog of articles that were left in various stages of completion before I became almost completely inactive for several years on the blogosphere. I am not posting this article now as part of some attempt to pressure Craig into debating me right now; in fact, I'm in no rush to debate him, having been "out of the loop" for quite a while.

Second, I want to emphasize I am not calling into question Craig's integrity. First, I apparently was unable to locate my reply, if any, to a student's proposal for me to debate Craig at Harvard in 1999. Second, I was invited to debate Craig on Lee Strobel's television show, "Faith Under Fire," but I objected to the venue. Third, I have made no effort at all since 2005 to follow-up with Craig about debating.

What follows is the text I found in my Drafts folder from late 2005/early 2006.

How to Argue that Someone Lied

Step 1. Show that person P said X.

Step 2. Show that X is false.

Step 3. Show that the best explanation for P's saying X is that P intended to deceive P's audience, e.g.,

3.1. Show that lying explains why P said X when X is false.
3.2. Show that 'P was simply mistaken about X' (because P forgot, was misinformed, etc.) is not a good explanation for why P said X when X is false.
3.3. Show that 'P is not self-deceived about X' is not a good explanation for why P said X when X is false.
3.4. As appropriate, show that other alternative explanations are not good explanations.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Index: Evidential Arguments for Naturalism

This is a link to my series on The Secular Outpost about evidential arguments for naturalism.

LINK

Migrated to Disqus for Comments on Posts

This is just a quick housekeeping announcement to say that I just migrated this blog over to Disqus for comments. I've imported existing comments from Blogger into Disqus and saw a message stating the import process may take more than 24 hours to complete, due to high traffic volume at Disqus.