Outshine The Sun: Peter Kreeft

Showing posts with label Peter Kreeft. Show all posts

Friday, 5 June 2015

Estranged Notions: How to Prove that Transcendentalism is True

Today's post is Kreeft's next bash at trying to refute reductionism:

How to Prove that Transcendentalism is True

While there is more of an actual substantive argument in this post than the last, the quality of the logic has not improved.

Wednesday, 3 June 2015

Estranged Notions: Why Reality Includes More (Not Less) Than You May Think

Today's post:

Why Reality Includes More (Not Less) Than You May Think

Kreeft thinks he can refute reductionism by means of inane schoolboy logic ("it's a universal negative claim! there could be a counterexample anywhere in the universe!"). Needless to say this position would be laughed at by any sane philosopher.

However Kreeft doesn't stop digging there; he plunges headlong into vitalism by claiming that "souls" can "defy" gravity—a living person can jump, a dead one generally can't—which makes me wonder whether he thinks that jumping cheetah robots have souls.

Wednesday, 15 April 2015

Estranged Notions: Answering 5 More Common Objections to the Resurrection

Today's post:

Answering 5 More Common Objections to the Resurrection

“Common” objections? These are ridiculous strawmen.

Monday, 13 April 2015

Estranged Notions: Real Encounter: 13 Reasons Jesus’ Disciples Did Not Hallucinate

Today's post:

Real Encounter: 13 Reasons Jesus’ Disciples Did Not Hallucinate

Summary: the disciples did not hallucinate because the accounts in the NT—which are totally historically accurate right down to the last scrap of hearsay—aren't consistent with naïve ideas of how hallucinations work.

Friday, 10 April 2015

Estranged Notions: Refuting the Myth Theory: 6 Reasons Why the Resurrection Accounts are True

Today's post:

Refuting the Myth Theory: 6 Reasons Why the Resurrection Accounts are True

Kreeft does not merely descend to rock bottom but breaks out the heavy-duty drilling equipment in this piece. Just to list in brief the most egregious claims, we have:

Estranged Notions: Debunking the Conspiracy Theory: 7 Arguments Why Jesus’ Disciples Did Not Lie

Today's post:

Debunking the Conspiracy Theory: 7 Arguments Why Jesus’ Disciples Did Not Lie

Another very poor showing from Kreeft. His response assumes from the start that everything in the Gospels and Acts about who the disciples were and what they did is unquestioned historical fact; it discounts the probability that the Gospel stories did not originate in the original circle of disciples (assuming for the sake of argument that this existed) but were at least a generation later; it assumes that those original disciples would have needed to make easily-controverted claims in public and in such a way that the Jewish authorities would have had to take note; and so on.

Kreeft even claims that no-one confessed under torture that it was a conspiracy—but we have absolutely no reason to suspect that anyone in the original group of disciples was ever tortured for any reason! We know nothing about the circumstances of any of their deaths; the “traditional” martyrdom accounts accreted over time and were never credible.

And who does he use as authorities? Blaise Pascal, Aquinas, and William Lane Craig...

Monday, 6 April 2015

Estranged Notions: Rejecting the Swoon Theory: 9 Reasons Why Jesus Did Not Just Faint on the Cross

Today's post:

Rejecting the Swoon Theory: 9 Reasons Why Jesus Did Not Just Faint on the Cross

The “swoon theory” is none too strong as an explanation, but Kreeft's attempts to refute it are quite pathetic. He relies heavily on the historical accuracy of GJohn—and even makes the untenable traditional claim that it was written by an eyewitness—and also makes unjustifiably strong claims about Roman practices.

Friday, 3 April 2015

Estranged Notions: 5 Possible Theories that Explain the Resurrection of Jesus

Today's post:

5 Possible Theories that Explain the Resurrection of Jesus

Kreeft starts a series attempting to prove the historicity of the Resurrection, and already he's in trouble; the idea that any of the alternative theories can be “refuted” in any strong sense is obviously foolish (nothing in history is ever entirely certain), so to justify the Resurrection theory by eliminating alternatives, he has to show that the probability of the disjunction of all alternative theories is low enough to overcome the low prior we must necessarily assign to a miracle claim.