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.
You are all weak atheists in panic. You should all admit the mystery that is going to be forever beyond the reach of human reason, science or math. This mystery is about the ultimate origin of our universe. So there is a gap there that can be filled by God, but it is such a gap that we can never fill in with our science, and it is not a small gap either: it is an infinitely large gap.
When a Christian proposes God as a filler for that gap you should keep your calm and appreciate that it is just a proposal and it is rationally permissible. However, there is no logical entailment from the fact that the universe had a beginning in time and that we don’t know why, to the conclusion that therefore a God as described in the Bible or the Quran exists and is responsible for the universe. That should be the line of defence here: The lack of such a logical entailment. Or as philosophers say: God is a necessary condition for the existence of the Universe, but it is not a sufficient condition. It is a fine proposal in our speculation for the origin of the Universe. But it just speculation. And we will never get beyond speculation. Those of you who think that Science (with a capital S) is such a magical powerful and epistemologically privileged thing that it can resolve this question, are just clueless about what science is and what its limits are.
Now, a few words for the person who posted a Shelly Kagan video here. Another weakness of atheist wannabe people who are in panic is this: William Lane Craig is right in accusing atheism of nihilism. Shelly Kagan was not being honest in that video. He refused to answer the real question WLC was trying to get at. Namely whether moral values have a Platonic existence (which cannot be the case if Naturalism is true) or not. If not, then they can be no more than cultural constructs. Kagan simply asserts that we are intelligent creatures and we can recognize those values. But that is not issue here. Are we recognizing norms and values we invented? Or are recognizing eternally existing Platonic values? That is the question WLC is asking.
WLC is correct in his Kalam Cosmological Argument, and his Morality Argument. Both arguments are valid and sound, they prove their conclusions. The universe did have a beginning that requires an explanation, and an explanation that by definition cannot be natural. And on a materialistic worldview there is no room for Platonic moral values and duties, therefore an atheist has to admit that they are contingent conventions.
If you can still be an atheist after this point is the real question here. Can you handle the fact that science is doomed to be forever incomplete and wondering why the world exists at all? Can you handle the fact that unlike an atheist a Christian has a true philosophical foundation for their ethics that warrants them to assert the truth (and not just the convenience or utility) of the moral norms and values they defend?
If you cannot handle this, just give up and Please STOP WHINING. If you cannot take the heat get out of the kitchen. Stop ridiculing WLC because you don’t even know what you are talking about. He knows his stuff and you don’t. Jesus story may be preposterous to you, but that doesn’t mean that therefore Kalam argument or the Moral argument must be preposterous jokes too. Just shut up because you are embarassing yourselves.
With love,
An atheist who despises phoneys like you
P.S. Maybe you should just admit you are nothing but a Christian who hates God for some reason. Don’t call yourself an atheist because you are not.
I heard the moderator say at the very end that the discussion may be sold as CD or on the web. I hope this is not true. I very much would like to have friends and acquaintances see this important discussion without having to pay Southern Baptists for it.
I think, despite what I read on the web after the Nye/Ham debate, these philosophical discussions are important, including Nye/Ham, especially with ignorant or misguided people. We in Maine have an embarrassment of a governor because there are too many ignorant and misguided folks.
So, I hope Dr Carroll could make sure that the discussion is freely available.
Thank you very much for an important public service.
pastafar,
Citations needed.
Pastafar,
Your accusation of people on this thread “whining,” opps, I mean, “WHINING” or of people being “weak atheists in panic” is embarrassingly ironic given the general “whining” tone of your rant.
With love,
An atheist rolling his eyes.
P.S. Your P.S. is a whopping non-sequitur.
I Just noticed that Michael’s Substantive posts have been removed. So much for the free flow of debates.
Stan,
They have not been removed. They have been hidden due to a high number of internet users giving them a thumbs-down. You can still read them (should you want to) by clicking “Click here to see”
Stan,
Steve is right, and I want to add, that you and everybody can give a like or dislike or nothing at all. I think the magic number is 5 or 6 dislikes when the message will be hidden unless specifically selected and the message will be highlighted in yellow when 5 or 6 likes are given.
I’m not sure what happens if there are 5 or 6 likes and also as many dislikes. Maybe the hidden message is highlighted. đ
I think it is a very democratic way to quickly show what the readers think of the message. I often click a hidden message to see if I agree or not. It’s not censorship
Where’s the video? What was the point if nobody can watch it now? I thought the era of only live TV ended with the invention of the VHS and now we can’t watch a video unless we watch it live?
I do wish that smart people who acquiesce to debate the religious and the deranged insist on some ground rules that should definitely include allowing anyone at any time to watch the damn video of the debate!
Sean – you were fantastic! Enjoyed everything, especially the closing. I regret not making the trip to NOLA…
To pastafar: I’ll repeat what I posted above in response to Micheal, the ranter.
Many times in the debate, Craig would say things of the form “the science is like this or like that” and Carroll would respond with “no, actually you don’t understand, it’s like this, not like that…” Now, which one do we trust to accurately understand cosmology? Here’s a hint: cosmology requires lots and lots of complex mathematics.
Craig will always misunderstand and misrepresent the physics that he talks about simply because he can’t do real math. I’m not faulting him, he just didn’t choose to study math, and unfortunately, there is no layman route to understanding cosmology. You simply need the math. (I’m speaking as a mathematician)
So, when you claim that Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument is ‘correct’, implying that he is somehow correct in his assertion that the universe had a beginning, you have to recognize that he’s making this claim, in the face of an expert who disagrees, with little to no understanding of the details of what he’s saying.
Of course, Craig can make a philosophical argument for the beginning of the universe, but then we get into a whole new area of embarrassing misunderstandings.
The forum is going on right now and is being streamed still.
Haha, Tim Maudlin calling out Craig on his game playing rhetoric.
The streaming is set to private again đ hopefully only for the break
@Jake Maier, to get the youtube line, use this link http://www.tacticalfaith.com/live-stream/
The youtube link changes between speakers.
So I missed the debate live last night.
Is it available yet to re-watch? I can’t seem to find it anywhere. I can get the live stream of todays events, but where is last night’s debate?
I think itâs interesting that Craig claims to be a Christian and therefore presumably accepts the standard Christian dogma (e.g., the doctrine of original sin, the virgin birth, Christâs resurrection, etc.). Or is it possible to be âChristianâ without buying the Christian story? That I donât know. However, if Craig is sophisticated enough to invoke the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem in an argument for the existence of God and yet believes in, say, the virgin birth, this is testament to the human ability to compartmentalize. To be fair, I donât know whether Craig takes this stuff literally.
I thought the debate was great. As Sean pointed out, having an eternal, transcendent God, existing outside of space and time, who creates it all really has no explanatory value. If you wonder where the universe (or the laws of physics) came from, then replacing that with a bigger mystery doesnât help.
piledHighAndDeep @ 7:56 pm:
whoa, hold on there!
who says physicists — or anyone else on the nontheist side of the debate — are implying that we give up looking for a cause (much less directly arguing for giving up or in fact have already given up looking)?
isn’t that the theistic conclusion? “god did it! we’re done here … in fact we’ve been done for millennia — it’s all in this handy little book!”
simply put, the nontheist argument is that it’s ok to admit not knowing the answer to a question. not knowing is all the more reason to keep looking — rather than conjuring magical loving superbeings to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.
there is no other way to find out if there is a cause than to keep looking.
one more thing:
missed debate. want video.
So far, I haven’t seen the video posted on YouTube, but hopefully it will be there soon. In searching for the video, I did find this gem from Dr. Carroll… http://youtu.be/Eh8Z3fhaBdM in which he “responds” to the first premise of the KLA with “how do you know,” while the video ends with “Wah, Wah.” Really, now? I suppose when Carroll is with his college-age (mental or emotional) Internet infidel groupies that kind of shallow, sophomoric, sarcastic “response” passes. And obviously the producer of that video segment believed it to be a knock-down argument. I hope Carroll didn’t present more of that in the debate, because it would be simply embarrassing.
Further, it is truly odd that a naturalist would ask “how do you know?” For how does a naturalist -know- anything? I mean, on naturalism, one has -no- reason to believe he/she can know anything at all, including that naturalism is true! Carl Sagan himself once admitted as much, when he said that even his observations (let alone his assessments) cannot be assumed as truth. If naturalism is true, you simply have no reason to believe you have a mind that can know anything at all. The naturalistic mind is only evolved to successfully propagate, nothing more, something that is not necessarily consistent with knowing anything at all.
The naturalist, therefore, has at the very core of his/her system of rationalizing observation a number of beliefs that he simply cannot know, but can only believe. I point out this is one of the characteristics atheists use to describe what they refer to as “religion.” Naturalism is a religious belief just like theism and Carroll is at least as religious as Craig or any other theist. There is simply this point at which Carroll, Dawkins, and others cease to be doing science and start doing religion without telling anyone when they crossed over. I doubt whether they realize it themselves.
@Clark Griswold, the answer was “maybe it doesn’t, how do you know?” Which is all that is needed to reject the premise since it’s a naked assertion. That which is asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence.
I guess you didn’t understand that because you’re not as smart as a lowly internet infidel.
And the rest of your comment has also long been PRATTed. zzzzzz.
pastafar, Richard Amiel McGough: You and other commentators here, and especially Sean, in the debate, seem oblivious of the fact that morality as an evolutionary adaptation is an active and successful topic of empirical research in ethology. Some forms of morality-related behaviors—altruism, restraint of lethal force, empathy—do exist in animals other than humans, even quite primitive, and are well explained as adaptations that support the particular life styles of the corresponding species.
As to humans, their consciously-held right/wrong values are clearly variable and politically-biased: even the Holy See has by now expressed some tolerance of homosexuality (who would have believed?!) In contrast, not too long ago, genocide did count in some countries as a commendable patriotic duty, and not too many centuries ago, burning a person for denial would be characterised as an auto da fe (“act of faith.”) The only true human moral invariants are those reactions that arise from our unconsciousness, from our gut feelings, from our uncontrollable emotions; things like the pinch we feel in our hearts when watching the suffering of others, our impulse to protect the young of even remotely related species, our feeling good upon giving to charity, etc. And behaviors indicatory of feelings like these are exhibited in non-human species as well, and in humans they are so wonderfully adapted to succeeding in our tough social-selective environment that we do not have to look for speculative supernatural or humanistic causes to understand them.
Human morality is neither godly nor humanistic—it’s basically an evolutionary adaptation under the influence of the prevailing culture and political correctness. And the fact that many an atheist do not recognize this, and imply, as Sean, a humanistic origin for it, only serves to show that a naturalist world view based on cosmology alone, without the essential support of biology, cannot be self-sufficient.
Sean,
You did a phenomenal job last night. It was one of VERY few debates I seen Craig handled in such fashion. Craig looked flustered and out of sorts at times while you were cool, calm and collected. Your points came across VERY clear and you connected with the audience. Let’s face it, we were severely out numbered last night. I had some theist behind be who said that you made the better points and made more sense. We can only hope that is the way most felt. Thanks for the picture.
@DEL, moral behavior is only empirical descriptively. You’re missing the point that normative values are not empirically demonstrable.
Lucy Harris, thanks for filling in the blank! Yeah, that “maybe it was” was the part I must have missed, the one that made Carroll’s response the slam-dunk that it was. Thanks! :-^
Craig’s premise 1 is a logical assertion that requires more than, “maybe not” to refute.
That still leaves the nasty problem of the religious nature of naturalism. It’s founded on things you cannot know but can only believe.