Tomorrow (Friday) is the big day: the debate with William Lane Craig at the Greer-Heard Forum, as I previously mentioned. And of course the event continues Saturday, with contributions from Tim Maudlin, Alex Rosenberg, Robin Collins, and James Sinclair.
I know what you’re asking: will it be live-streamed? Yes indeed!
[Update: Here is the video.]
Fun starts at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific. (Corrected from earlier goof.) The format is an opening 20-minute speech by WLC and me (in that order), followed by 12-minute rebuttals, and then 8-minute closing statements, and concluding with 40 minutes of audience questions. Official Twitter hashtag is #GreerHeard14, which I believe you can use to submit questions for the Q&A. I wouldn’t lie to you: I think this will be worth watching.
You can find some of WLC’s thoughts on the upcoming event at his Reasonable Faith website. One important correction I would make to what you will read there: Craig and his interlocutor Kevin Harris interpret my statement that “my goal here is not to win the debate” as a strategy to avoid dealing with WLC’s arguments, or as “a way to lower expectations.” Neither is remotely true. I want to make the case for naturalism, and to do that it’s obviously necessary to counter any objections that get raised. Moreover, I think that expectations (for me) should be set ridiculously high. The case I hope to make for naturalism will be so impressively, mind-bogglingly, breathtakingly strong that it should be nearly impossible for any reasonable person to hear it and not be immediately convinced. Honestly, I’ll be disappointed if there are any theists left in the audience once the whole thing is over.
Feel free to organize viewing parties, celebrations, discussion groups, what have you. There should definitely be a drinking game involved (it’ll be happy hour on the West Coast, you lightweights), but I’ll leave the details to you. Suggested starting points: drink every time WLC uses a syllogism, or every time I show an equation. But be sure to have something to eat, first.
If it seems worthwhile, I will follow-up with thoughts after the debate, and try to answer questions. Let’s have some fun.
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The live streaming is already failing. It’s cutting in and out, more out than in. Reminds me of the Jon Stewart – Bill O’Reilly debate. Hopefully this will be archived so I can watch it later.
Tried several times but could not access the debate
I can’t get the stream to play, either. 🙁
Hope it’ll be uploaded to YouTube really soon?
Very poor opening from Doctor Carroll. No details just rants. I’m a atheist but this is just bad.
Whoops ‘an atheist’
Just heard the live stream of the opening talks, WLC and then Sean.
WOW, Sean, that was an awesome tour of naturalism.
I am, as they say in England, totally gobsmacked!
Craig is correcting Carroll on Hawking’s cosmology. Craig is right. Points out that plausible models for the universe are past incomplete, and there is no plausible classical model that is past infinite. This is great, writing this is distracting.
I do not believe this – Carroll has gone back to the argument in his first talk with have nothing to do with the title of the debate. Craig is running away with this debate.
Sean please some details.
Come on Sean you can do better than this.
Sean is claiming Craig ignored his fine turning argument. Craig did not.
Oh. Marshall McLuhan moment!
If anyone else is reading how did you feel this went?
Come on guys someone must have an opinion. Whoops question time.
Whoops not question time just third talk.
It is to bad that I can’t seem to be able to view this talk right now. Ah well.
I do hope that both are having a good time, enjoying each other’s discussions, sharing in the common human experience and avoiding trying to win, to see the other as some kind of opponent to be beaten…
Third talk from Sean. Going off topic. Talking about the Bible. Seems to given up talking about cosmology. Pop psychology. Cannot believe that a cosmologist gave up talking about cosmology.
Humanity Akbar this talk was very interesting I think, I read that it will be placed on youtube in the next couple of days. I must admit I was very impressed by Craig.
Sean is again claiming that the universe is somehow different from what is in it – gives no explanation.
Craig is so polite. No matter what you think about his arguments – he is class.
SC and WLC are speaking in two different languages. I guess being an engineer for 37 years has affected my thinking processes, but WLC’s dialog strikes me as noncoherent. He really needed a top down structure that would organize his thoughts for the audience. Much of his time, WLC knit picked interpretations of SC’s models with esoteric points that ran the clock down but really avoided his job of building the God argument. And for ‘heavens’ sake, if you’re going to throw Boltzmann’s brains out there, you do need to indulge the listening masses with a decent definition first. It seemed to me WLC’s main tact was “see, we can’t explain it – and that is more affirmative proof “.
“It seemed to me WLC’s main tact was “see, we can’t explain it – and that is more affirmative proof”. I have no idea what you are on about it is Carroll who is falling back on ‘very iffy’ cosmology. In the 20’s and 30’s it was bouncing universes, in the 50’s – mid 60’s The Steady State, 70’s to the 90’s Quantum models (see WLC, Q. Smith – Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology), All have failed as I believe Carroll’s cosmology will as well. If you find Craig difficult to understand perhaps it has something to do with your cognitive limitations.
Flipping heck – why do I get two thumbs down for saying that Craig is polite?
for fuck’s sake Michael, we get it, you’re a fan of Craig and you want to brainwash everyone into thinking he is the 2nd coming. stop live blogging in the comments section of another blog. This isn’t fox news and the fox news model of brainwashing doesn’t work anyway.
Sean is making great arguments with very rational explanations and Craig is veering off topic over and over again, repeatedly presenting straw man arguments and giving incorrect explanations of well known scientific theories. There is an irony in Craig’s repetitive theme, “cosmology is too incredible to believe”. Really?! but space god isn’t?
You think Sean’s comments are irrational because you don’t have an elementary understanding of quantum mechanics, just like Craig. Craig doesn’t know the difference between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. I understand that you think science is the devil, but you’re simply making an ass of yourself by showing your blatant bias. You get thumbs down for being a transparent a-hole on a site full of intelligent and civil people. Either you think we’re stupid enough for that tactic or you’re an extremely arrogant person, either way, it’s insulting and/or tiring.
Sean and Craig were both rational and intelligent. Good job guys.