{"id":11684,"date":"2014-02-20T08:03:13","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T16:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=11684"},"modified":"2014-02-27T19:04:24","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T03:04:24","slug":"god-and-cosmology-debate-with-w-l-craig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/20\/god-and-cosmology-debate-with-w-l-craig\/","title":{"rendered":"God and Cosmology Debate with W.L. Craig"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow (Friday) is the big day: the debate with William Lane Craig at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greerheard.com\/\">Greer-Heard Forum<\/a>, as I previously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/28\/william-lane-craig-debate\/\">mentioned<\/a>. And of course the event continues Saturday, with contributions from Tim Maudlin, Alex Rosenberg, Robin Collins, and James Sinclair.<\/p>\n<p>I know what you&#8217;re asking: will it be live-streamed? Yes indeed!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tacticalfaith.com\/live-stream\/\">Live stream<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[<strong>Update:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/27\/godcosmology-debate-videos\/\">Here is the video<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<p>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&#038;A. I wouldn&#8217;t lie to you: I think this will be worth watching.<\/p>\n<p>You can find some of WLC&#8217;s thoughts on the upcoming event at his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reasonablefaith.org\/a-highly-anticipated-debate\">Reasonable Faith<\/a> website. One important correction I would make to what you will read there: Craig and his interlocutor Kevin Harris interpret my statement that &#8220;my goal here is not to win the debate&#8221; as a strategy to avoid dealing with WLC&#8217;s arguments, or as &#8220;a way to lower expectations.&#8221; Neither is remotely true. I want to make the case for naturalism, and to do that it&#8217;s obviously necessary to counter any objections that get raised. Moreover, I think that expectations (for me) should be set <em>ridiculously high<\/em>. 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&#8217;ll be disappointed if there are any theists left in the audience once the whole thing is over.<\/p>\n<p>Feel free to organize viewing parties, celebrations, discussion groups, what have you. There should definitely be a drinking game involved (it&#8217;ll be happy hour on the West Coast, you lightweights), but I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>If it seems worthwhile, I will follow-up with thoughts after the debate, and try to answer questions. Let&#8217;s have some fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;re asking: will it be live-streamed? Yes indeed! Live stream [Update: Here is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11684"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11752,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11684\/revisions\/11752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}