Knowledge of God's existence properly basic?

[Sal1981]

Show me a proper definition of god, and I'll look for a P & ~P.

A metaphysically perfect being that is omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omnipresent.

Has this been covered before how they would be internally contradictory?

[Cheerful Charlie]

Well, I watched another WLC debate (self-inflicted torture; I never learn) and he claimed that knowledge of God's existence (something like that) is properly basic..... fuck me.

If you were conversatin' with Craig, how would you respond to that, er, argument?

It ain't, since God can be disproven.
 WCL got this trope from Alvin Plantinga.

What counts as justification for belief in God? Alvin Plantinga in his book Warranted Christian Belief has argued that man has a sensus divinitatis or "sense of the divine," opening the possibility that belief in God could be properly basic. Plantinga goes on to argue that attempts to reject Christian theism as unwarranted fail.

For those interested, Plantinga's book can be found here
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/plantinga/warrant3.html

Sensus Divinatus comes from Calvin, who contradicts himself on the concept, claiming original sin depives us of SD.  And atheists most certainly don't have it.

And as anybody with sense knows, the only real  basic belief is in the Easter Bunny.  I'd like to see Plantinga prove otherwise.

Cheerful Charlie

[Cheerful Charlie]

I recently (as of the last 2 months) became interested in and began studying some areas of philosophy (Ayn Rand notwithstanding)

Well, I wouldn't consider Rand a philosopher...

Oh I have empathy for other people and the fact that they have different positions than I, but it is in direct conflict here with my great dislike of practically all things Bill Craig.

He's not a very good philosopher, frankly.  There are many good theistic philosophers.  Alvin Plantinga, for example, is a very skilled philosopher.

I will have to disgree here.  I find Plantinga too often uses strawmen arguments.

Cheerful Charlie

[Cheerful Charlie]

Show me a proper definition of god, and I'll look for a P & ~P.

A metaphysically perfect being that is omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omnipresent.

Has this been covered before how they would be internally contradictory?

Yes, its an ancient idea that has been argued for centuries.  The problem of evil from Epicururus for example.  If God is all power and good, why does evil exist?  If God is omniscient then we can have no free will.  If God predestines all, doesn't that make God responsible for  moral evil.  Augustine gave up on free will and Calvin and Luther followed.  How to square all of this?  God is inscrutable.  Which is no answer.  Luther wrote a number of  sermons stating a Christian must eliminate his sense of reason.
Luther's book on free will, "The Bondage of the Will" is a real eye opener to see Luther struggle with this.  Islam also struggles with this and usually just abandons any attempt to deal with the issues.

Again, it may be asked — Why does He not then change, in His motion, those evil wills which He moves? This belongs to those secrets of Majesty, where "His judgments are past finding out." Nor is it ours to search into, but to adore these mysteries. If "flesh and blood" here take offence and murmur, let it murmur, but it will be just where it was before. God is not, on that account, changed! And if numbers of the wicked be offended and "go away," yet, the elect shall remain!

...
Sect. XCIV. — BUT it is this, that seems to give the greatest offence to common sense or natural reason, — that the God, who is set forth as being so full of mercy and goodness, should, of His mere will, leave men, harden them, and damn them, as though He delighted in the sins, and in the great and eternal torments of the miserable. To think thus of God, seems iniquitous, cruel, intolerable; and it is this that has given offence to so many and great men of so many ages.

And who would not be offended? I myself have been offended more than once, even unto the deepest abyss of desperation; nay, so far, as even to wish that I had never been born a man; that is, before I was brought to know how healthful that desperation was, and how near it was unto grace. Here it is, that there has been so much toiling and labouring, to excuse the goodness of God, and to accuse the will of man
- Luther

Does Luther's answer here convince you?

Time
Augustine in his Confessions, Book 10 states God must be beyond and outside time.  If so all exists at once and was created at once. Again, we have no free will.  All moral evil is God's doing.

The problem of God and time is still being very actively debated.  If god is within time and is affected by time, where does time come from?

And much, much more.

Cheerful Charlie

[Colanth]

If you were conversatin' with Craig, how would you respond to that, er, argument?

I'd remind him that it's belief in God, not knowledge of God, that's considered basic - then ask him if belief in his god is so basic, why the vast majority of people on the planet DON'T believe in his god.