Woodford’s replies relied heavily on fallacious and confused reasoning (the straw man fallacy in particular). Judging from the YouTube comments on Woodford’s video, many viewers didn’t notice that Woodford was attacking straw men. Granted, it’s understandable why they might not have known about Craig including both efficient and material causes for the “has a cause” notion because Woodford (for whatever reason) omitted mentioning that important fact. But even so, even if Craig had only the efficient cause in mind, Woodford’s attack on the first justification where Woodford concluded “This isn’t a distraction; it’s a refutation” would still be a distraction and not a refutation of any claim Craig actually made in the video clips. Woodford also accused Craig of a black-and-white fallacy Craig never made, and a fallacy of division Craig never made. Why did so many viewers not notice this?
Think of how clever politicians dodge a question; they give an answer that contains material closely related to the actual question but nonetheless doesn’t answer it. Red herrings and straw men have a greater chance of hoodwinking the audience when the material is closely related to the matter at hand while still being irrelevant. For example, given the context, the position “If something [like the universe] can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing” is similar to the claim “If the universe (the whole) came into being uncaused, then some things within the universe (the parts) are uncaused.” The positions are so similar one could understand how they could be confused for being the same claim when they aren’t. I’m not saying Woodford was deliberately deceiving his audience. In fact I think he probably wasn’t and that he made sincere errors in his thinking. You can try to spot such errors yourself by asking the following questions when person B attacks the position of person A:
What is person A’s actual position?
What is person B’s objection, and does this objection actually attack A’s position?
Is there a gap between what is claimed and what is shown when B attacks A’s position?
If one asked these questions, they might have noticed that “creation and causation are not two sides of the same coin” doesn’t attack Craig’s actual claim of “Something cannot come into being from nothing” supporting premise 1’. Even if Woodford showed that “creation and causation are not two sides of the same coin” there’s a gap between this and refuting the idea of “Something cannot come into being from nothing” supporting premise 1’.
Straw men and red herrings are tragically common on the internet, and we should be careful about not only spotting such errors but being careful to avoid making them ourselves.
If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing. Think about it; why don’t bicycles and Beethoven and root beer out of nothing? Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory?
Woodford responds by strawmanning Craig again, claiming Craig made a fallacy of division he never made. For those who don’t know, the fallacy of division is the fallacy of incorrectly inferring something is true of the parts because it is true for the whole. The example Woodford gives is this:
The United States is rich.
The United States has citizens.
Therefore, the United States’ citizens are rich.
In the case of Craig, Woodford believes it’s something like “If the universe (the whole) came into being uncaused, then some things within the universe (the parts) are uncaused.” But this is a straw man; Craig never made this claim. To see how this fallacy of division (FOD) claim is not the same claim as Craig’s inexplicability claim, note how “The universe came into being uncaused and nothing within the universe is uncaused” is logically inconsistent with the FOD claim but logically consistent with Craig’s inexplicability claim (there’s no self-contradiction in the universe beginning to exist uncaused but it being inexplicable that anything and everything within the universe doesn’t come into being from nothing). Woodford never attacks Craig’s actual claim here.
So why does Craig’s inexplicability claim matter? One reason is that, if true, it would seem to imply that “Something cannot come into being from nothing” is not merely the best explanation for why anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing, it’s the only explanation!
There might be another reason. At around 11:54 to 12:16 of Craig’s video, Craig says:
Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? What makes nothingness so discriminatory? There can’t be anything about nothingness that favors universes for nothingness doesn’t have any properties. Nor can anything constrain nothingness since there isn’t anything to be constrained.
It seems that Craig might believe it would be special pleading to say that universes can come into being from nothing but not other stuff like root beer and bicycles. Note that the reason behind this doesn’t have anything to do with “The parts have the property simply because the whole does” but rather the nature of nothingness itself.
Craig’s Third Justification: Empirical Evidence
Craig says at around 12:17 of his video that “Common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise 1’.” Although Woodford doesn’t quote Craig’s third justification Woodford does kind of allude to it. He says this at around 7:03 to 7:29:
Sure, nobody sincerely believes that macroscopic things can pop into existence without a cause, and for good reason: our empirical observations and more importantly, our objective verifiable evidence clearly shows that when macroscopic things ‘begin to exist’ they do so via causation. However, and this was Scott’s excellent point, the exact same objective, verifiable evidence equally shows that all new macroscopic things are comprised of material that already existed. Hence Craig and his ilk are cherry-picking in the extreme. They are confidently asserting that macroscopic things are caused in the classical sense, and yet they’re rejecting that all new macroscopic things are merely the rearrangement of already existing material.
Does it follow that Craig and his ilk are cherry-picking observations? No, because not all inductive predicates are created equal. To illustrate, consider this inductive argument:
All observed humans came from other humans (whether via the standard way, in vitro fertilization, or whatever).
Therefore, all humans came from other humans.
If Woodford rejects this conclusion, does it mean he’s cherry-picking observations? No, that would be just as non sequitur as believing Craig and his ilk were cherry-picking observations. Whether you’re a creationist or evolutionist, you’ll probably recognize that there’s something wrong with this inductive argument. The problem is that not all inductive predicates (the predicate here being “came from other humans”) are “projectible” i.e. reasonable to extrapolate for the given extrapolation region. We have excellent reason to believe the predicate of (1) is not projectible. Similarly, Craig believes we have excellent reason to believe a predicate like “comprised of material that already exists” for the sample class of “new observed macroscopic physical objects” is not projectible. What reasons are those? Well, the universe began to exist and something cannot come into being from nothing, which together imply that the universe (a presumably macroscopic physical thing) was a new thing that did not have a material cause.
Woodford accuses “Craig and his ilk” of “confidently asserting that macroscopic things are caused in the classical sense” but this doesn’t seem to be true either. Unfortunately Woodford never defines what he means by “classical causation” but presumably he means the causation of classical mechanics, which is deterministic and has the cause temporally precede the effect. Craig doesn’t believe either criteria holds for all macroscopic objects, especially the universe. Craig believes the universe began to exist and he also believes the universe’s cause was simultaneous with the effect, and he believes God indeterministically caused the universe into being.
Craig’s First Justification, Part 2: Denying Premise 1’
In one of Woodford’s clips William Lane Craig says:
To claim that something coming into being from nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls the rabbit out of a hat, at least you’ve got the magician, not to mention the hat. But if you deny premise 1’ you’ve got to think the whole universe just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatsoever. But nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village can just pop into being without a cause.
At around 5:47 to 6:33 Woodford addresses the claim that denying premise 1’ means you’d have to believe the whole universe came into being sometime in the past for no reason at all (i.e. came into being uncaused), to which Woodford promptly replies, “Except no, we don’t.” Except logic says, “Yes, we do.” Seriously, one can rigorously prove this using symbolic logic. For those who are logic savvy (if you’re not, see parts 1 and 2 of my introductory logic series which contains all the information needed to follow the proof I will show; otherwise I will come back to plain English in a little bit), here are the propositional variables:
B = the universe began to exist.
C = the universe has cause of its beginning.
We can rigorously prove that believing the denial of premise 1’ (i.e. ¬(B → C)) means you logically have to believe that the universe began to exist without a cause (i.e. B ∧ ¬C).
¬(B → C)
¬(B ∧ ¬C) indirect proof assumption
¬B ∨ ¬¬C 2, De Morgan’s Law
¬B ∨ C 3, double negation
B conditional proof assumption
¬¬B 5, double negation
C 4, 6 disjunctive syllogism
B → C 5-7 conditional proof
¬(B → C) ∧ (B → C) 1, 8 conjunction
B ∧ ¬C 2-9 indirect proof
Formal logic aside, how does Woodford dispute Craig’s claim? Woodford attacks a straw man and accuses Craig of a black-and-white fallacy (also known as “false dichotomy”) he never made: the universe either has a cause or it popped into being from nothing, when a third option to this false dichotomy is that the universe did not begin to exist (it always existed) and had no cause. Craig never says “Either the universe popped into being uncaused or it had a cause” in any of Woodford’s clips, nor does premise 1’ (“If the universe began to exist, then the universe has cause of its beginning”) imply any such dichotomy. The actual dichotomy premise 1’ implies is that either (a) the universe did not begin to exist; or (b) it had a cause. (I could use symbolic logic to prove this, but if you think about it and remember that 1’ says “If the universe began to exist, then the universe has cause of its beginning” you might see why this would imply that either the universe had a cause or it had no beginning.) So saying the universe is both uncaused and never began to exist would not at all constitute denying that if the universe began to exist, then the universe has cause of its beginning. If one denied premise 1’ and justified that denial by saying the universe always existed and was never caused, that would be committing the red herring fallacy.
If you had trouble with the symbolic logic showing that denying the first premise meant you’d have to believe the universe began to exist uncaused, here’s one way to think about it: denying “Everything that begins to exist has a cause” commits you to believing there is something that began to exist that had no cause; denying “Every universe that began to exist had a cause” commits you to believing there’s a universe that began to exist without a cause, and if you narrow that claim to just this universe as 1’ does, denying 1’ commits you to believing our universe began to exist without a cause. Craig was absolutely right and Woodford just didn’t understand the logic of the situation.
