Harris vs Craig

9 part debate

I have almost given up on debates, but I had to at least check out these two power houses. William Lane Craig is a power house only in terms of his following. He offers nothing new here. Harris' handling of him is the best I have seen. It is at the Catholic college of Notre Dame, so kudos to them for hosting.

Hope you all can get a chance to view it, and if you find something missing in Harris' view, please let me know, because I didn't see it.

I'm really looking forward to hearing that debate, Lausten.
But haven't squeezed in the time, yet. D'oh!
Thanks for posting the reminder.

I just clicked on this link for this - and it appears it has been taken down. Does anyone have another for the audio or video of this?
Thanks

Thanks for the link! I appreciate it.
Just as a side - I use Any Video Converter to convert video to mp3. It worked well - but I'm unsure at this time of any nasties with this program.
If anyone else uses anything better please let me know.

Thanks

PS. I did not know gobbledigook counted as a slam down arguement. Go figure.

I'm very interested in people's thoughts on this one. The differences in style that these two showed were so stark that it really stands out as an unusual debate.

Anyone have a snappy retort to the Craig "argument from evil" (at 1:13:44 in the video) where he claims that evil provides a proof of god since it implies objective morality? I understand that it is no more than the standard argument from morality, but the formulation is so simple that it is one that would likely come up in a discussion with an everyday theist.

(From the transcript here: http://www.mandm.org.nz/2011/05/transcript-sam-harris-v-william-lane-craig-debate-“is-good-from-god”.html)

"Notice, uh, secondly, I would want to say, evil actually proves that God exists. Because if God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. If evil exists, it follows that moral values and duties do exist, namely, some that are evil. So evil actually proves the existence of God, since in the absence of God, good and evil as such would not exist. So you cannot press both the Problem of Evil and agree with my, uh, contention that if God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist, because evil will actually be an argument for the existence of God."

Best description I heard of this debate was as a joint press conference. Craig constantly misrepresented Harris and Harris mostly ignored Craig. Not a big fan of either speaker really.

Anyone have a snappy retort to the Craig "argument from evil"

The episode that responds to C.S. Lewis is probably a better place to get this answer, but I'll take a stab at it. First, trying to figure out what he is saying is similar to the poorly asked question of life the universe and everything from the Hitchiker's guide. I think he is saying that universal ideas of good and evil prove that those ideas came from somewhere other than culture and history. They can't have just been past on, since they developed very similarly in distant cultures. They must have been beamed into our brains from something beyond our comprehension.

First, how you get from there to the Christian God has never been explained to me by any theist. You can only do that if you completely ignore all other religious traditions and philosophy throughout history. But Craig points out that this is not the debate. So, looking at other traditions, all have some basis in basic human needs. We all need food and water and want a place where we can be left alone to rest and hopefully raise a next generation. To do that, some form of agreements are created; i.e. I won't sneak up on you while you are sleeping if you don't sneak up on me. You use that water over there, I'll use this water over here. In some cases the agreement is you move very far away and I won't kill you, but let's put that aside for now. Anyway, how does this use of reasoning to create peace with your neighbors lead to proof of God? I don't know.

What really seals it for me is that all the non-religious thinking about morality systems has not solved ethical dilemmas such as lifeboat scenarios or would you kill Hitler at 3 years old if you could go back in time or what do we do about genocides happening in far off countries. If religion offered something for these scenarios that any other attempt at them did not, you might have something. But we know that the actions of gods in any religion are arbitrary and inconsistent. Or to the extend the Problem of Evil to nature, natural disasters and disease are not selective.

It seems that Craig believes that no one had, or no one ever would have considered acting morally if they had not sat quietly with their eyes closed and pre-decided that the thoughts that were going to come to them were from God. It seems he believes no one would have been horrified at the sight of animals drowning in a flood based on instincts passed on to them from reptilian ancestors, they would only see that as evil because that's how Jesus would have reacted. Harris had a lot to pursue, but I would have liked it if he had pressed this one a little more. It is hard to say what Craig is really thinking.

Oh shout, you wanted snappy. That last paragraph is about as concise as I can get, but I'm not sure how well it would work without the rest of it.

As I recall Craig's moral argument it is:
1 If god does not exist then objective moral values do not exist
2 Objective moral values exist
3 therefore god exists.

In response to the Euthyphro dilemma when it is raised against him Craig avoids the horns of the dilemma essentially by placing good in god.

Based on his moral argument and response to the Euthyphro dilemma it seems reasonable to formulate an argument as follows.

1 If god exists then objective moral values exist.
2 Objective moral values do not exist.
3 therefore god does not exists.

Premise 1 seems to reasonably arise from Craig's moral argument and response to the Euthyphro dilemma.

Premise 2 seems plausible based on real world observations.

Therefore god does not exist.

Have I got it right?

In relation to handling Craig I feel Arif Ahmed poleaxed Craig when he debated him at Cambridge. It is a debate that is well worth listening to and is a good though not complete model of how to deal with Craig. Ahmed also disposed of Gary Habermas without breaking into a sweat.