Craig vs Harris Debate

[MarcusOfLycia]

Found this pretty interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UigeMSZ-KQ

I also felt 50% stupider after reading the comments.

[Maytan]

I never read comments on Youtube videos anymore. They just aren't worth the time.

I haven't watched the debate yet, but I plan to soon. Craig's debates are always entertaining.

[The Protector]

It was clear Craig had him dead to rights after his first response. Harris' response completely ignored all of Craigs arguments, and instead he went on a rant fitting of an 8th grader about how bad God is and how bad the Christian religion is. Only half-way through the entire presentation, Harris simultaneously ceded the debate and demonstrated his shocking ignorance of Christian theology. It was embarrassing, and more than that it was sad to see how obviously angry he is at God.

Judging from the comments, however, it appears many are easily persuaded by a heavily furled brow....

[PaulSacramento]

I have come to the conclusion that people who follow these debates have already made up their minds and both participantes are "preaching to the choir" that is why believers will say Craig won and atheists will say that Harris won.
We tend to focus on the points we agree on and WANT to agree on and disregard the rest.
The true measure of any debate is the "undecided" or the unbias ( if such a being exists).
Besides that, debates highlight debating skills more than actual "substance" of the topics and issues.

[MarcusOfLycia]

Yeah... I definitely got that out of what I read from atheists that I know who watched it. They thought Craig was 'weak' and his arguments were 'embarassing'. Yet I thought they were pretty good.

I think I'm learning something new about this topic: a lot of the time when people say they enjoy watching debates or reading controversial material they are more like vultures than 'open-minded' 'free-thinking' 'intellectuals'. I've also learned that I have a new pet peeve: I think the most worthless term in human history is 'free-thinking'.

[Maytan]

I have come to the conclusion that people who follow these debates have already made up their minds and both participantes are "preaching to the choir" that is why believers will say Craig won and atheists will say that Harris won.
We tend to focus on the points we agree on and WANT to agree on and disregard the rest.

I disagree. Believe it or not, there *are* reasonable people out there who will concede points they feel are valid, rather than just siding with whichever person is arguing for 'their side'. It's all about weighing the arguments, that's the point of a debate. Your statement is far too much of a generalization.

[MarcusOfLycia]

There certainly are people out there who are reasonable... I just don't think they make up the vocal crowd in places like Youtube. Based on that and the response people I know have given it, I know full well in those specific cases that WLC could have performed a miracle and they would have found it as evidence to support Harris.

[Maytan]

There certainly are people out there who are reasonable... I just don't think they make up the vocal crowd in places like Youtube. Based on that and the response people I know have given it, I know full well in those specific cases that WLC could have performed a miracle and they would have found it as evidence to support Harris.

Oh, of course. I know plenty of people like that myself. It just seemed to me like Paul was stating it's the case for everybody, which is far from the truth. :p

[PaulSacramento]

I have come to the conclusion that people who follow these debates have already made up their minds and both participantes are "preaching to the choir" that is why believers will say Craig won and atheists will say that Harris won.
We tend to focus on the points we agree on and WANT to agree on and disregard the rest.

I disagree. Believe it or not, there *are* reasonable people out there who will concede points they feel are valid, rather than just siding with whichever person is arguing for 'their side'. It's all about weighing the arguments, that's the point of a debate. Your statement is far too much of a generalization.

Indeed, I was generalizing, which id correct to do with a group but not an individual.
I have gone through a few atheist websites and a few christian ones and even some that have BOTH and, as I pointed out, typically, the atheist believes that Harris won, the believers believe that Craig nailed him, while those in the middle saw points being made by both.
Here is an example:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/members ... -5-minutes

[The Protector]

That link directs to a log-in page, so I was not able to see the arguments of which you speak. Could you perhaps post a popular example of a good point Harris made that was actually on-topic? One that was not adequately refuted by Craig? Half-way through the Debate Harris essentially abandoned the topic of the debate; instead of showing why objective morality can exist given a naturalistic worldview, he droned on about why the Christian and Muslim Gods are not moral. Interesting as that debating topic might have been, it did nothing to address the actual subject of the debate.

After the first response section by Craig, Harris just started spinning; he went off-topic, and he relied heavily on old philisophical arguments like Hume and Plato's Euthyphro, which have been hashed out for a long, long time. Essentially, Harris' only response that was on-topic by the end was, "Well, objective morality exists because it's OBVIOUS to any SANE person what is objectively moral!" That may well be true, but it doesn't demonstrate that objective morality exists on a naturalistic framework. There were a lot of appeals to emotion and red herrings in there, but hardly any decent arguments as far as I could see.

Perhaps I do just have blinders on, though, and I would happily have them removed. Please tell me what I'm missing here.

[PaulSacramento]

Here are some examples:

Just for the record I find WLC to be a pompous ass.

Watch out for a couple of things; he will refer often to "scholars" who agree with his position and he will enumerate everything.

He will go for...

1 - There can be no objective morals witout god

2 - Objective moral values do exist

3 - I win


WLC has finished his 20 minute opening speech. In summary he asserts that without god there is no basis to judge an action as immoral.

What is annoying is that he is not so stupid as to believe what he says. He is a professional apologist who makes a good living out of these set-pieces

It was very predictable WLC

He mentions stuff that everybody recoils from and then asserts that without god we cannot condemn these things. Just as an animal can kill but can't murder or can use violence to reproduce but can't rape so too without objective moral standards rooted in god we have no morality, only personal preferences.

Now Sam Harris is on the offensive. He accuses WLC of frequently misquoting him.

His first point concerns, 1) consciouness and 2) well-being.

Imagine a universe in which everything suffers to the maximum - the worse possible misery for everyone. The minimum moral duty is to work to avoid this scenario. Reality is continuum in which we attempt to navigate away from this.

There are many more ways to suffer than to be sublimely happy. He is citing the Taliban as an example of a society which maximises suffering for its members. It is not unscientific to say that the Taliban are wrong. It concerns sciences like sociology and biology and psychology and economics.

There are many ways for judgements to be objectively wrong. Its possibe to value things that will make you miserable. Its possible not to know what you are missing. Something can be objectively wrong despite our personal opinion.

He is now looking at the example of health. The distinction between a healthy person and a dead one is clear. Nobody ever questons the objective value judgemets we make about health even if its difficult to define "good health".

He is drawing a distinction between moral ontology and moral semantics -

this is what i expected him to do, confuse the debate by going philosophical, demand Harris clean it up, build upon all points which is not cleaned up. it is very impressive.

He agrees that the flourishing of conscious creatures is good but asserts that if atheism is true there is no reason to say that the well being of conscious creatures is "good".

Kagan FLOORED him on exactly that statement.

Now he is defining what "good" does not mean. He is claiming that Sam Harris is confusing "pleasurable" with "good".

more semantics which harris must clean up...

WLC get away with murder because it is up to Harris to provide a world-view Craig is happy about, and craig aint never happy... Harris need to slam down on craigs founding of morals.

Sam Harris' rebuttal

9 million before their 5th birthday (70 or so per minute) Any god who allows this is eithe rimpotent or evil and eve worse most of these children and grieving parents are going to hell. No matter how good they are they are doomed for praying to the wrong god. No evidence for this but the bible asserts this.

God engineers people's situation and then condemns them for their ignorance. In contrast a serial killer can repent on death row and spend an eternity with Jebus.

God has no claims on morality. When chrisitans have some personal experience of god he is "good" when he allows a Tsunami he is "mysterious"

Perfection of narcissism - "he cured my excema and found me a cheap mortgage" but no concept of unimaginable suffering of fellow humanity

Why give us a book that supports slavery or encourages to kill somebody for practicing withcraft. Genocide is intrinsically "good" when god commands it.

Faith allows otherwise sane people to believe delusional things en masse. If you think saying a few Latin words over your pancakes turns them into the body of Elvis we think you are mad, if you think the same about a cracker and Jesus we call you a Catholic.

Christianity is a cult of human sacrifice - John 3:16

Just to post a few posts.

There was also ONE post that was more pro-craig:

I watched the entire thing, I am listening to Q's now but here are my points. I wrote them down as the debate when on.

1. Sam Harris has a misunderstanding of many points in the bible, for instance he mentioned slavery. Nowhere does the bible say God condoned it. Many athiests look at the sins committed by God fearing people in the bible and try to use it to say God is evil for allowing it. On the contrary, in most cases God condemed the sins they committed. We simply cannot blame God if someone claiming to be a believer in him commits a sin. Those sins were written in the bible for moral lessons for those who read about them. They are not there to condone them.

2. Another misunderstanding of his is about Hell being a literal fiery place. Not all Christians believe this view. Many believe it is a place of eternal seperation from God and his love. But lets say it is a place of eternal suffering? Hell was made for the devil first and foremost and then for the totally unrepentent, or those who even when God reveals himself to them, choose to deny him because they refuse to submit to his will.

that brings me to my next point

2. Sam Harris said that God "visits" evil and suffering on mankind daily. That is a total lie. God is not the CAUSE of the evil and suffering in the world. Rather HUMAN BEINGS are. Man dominates man to his injury and he causes most of the suffering in the world, outside of the suffering caused by natural events. The only case someone may make and I can understand their feeling on it is that God may not be stopping the evil and suffering man is committing against EACH OTHER fast enough according to our time table because for us thousands of years of suffering seem like an eternity, but for God this is a short blip of time. Also God has a timetable which we are not privy to when the end will come. So we don't know how much longer we have to wait, and it is frustrating sometimes yes.

Christians have the bible and although we do not know the date and hour of Christ's return, we can keep watch on the "season" of his return getting close by discerning where we are in time, based upon the 2 things that need to be occomplished prior to the end of this age. And these are biblical;

1. The gospel of God will be preached to every tribe, nation and tongue (matthew24:14,Mark13:10)

2. The glory of God will be revealed in the whole earth (Isaiah 40:5,Habakkuk2:14)

Niether has been totally occomplished yet.

Another point about the debate;

3. Sam Harris did imply all christians were psychopaths for believing in God. This is offensive to all believers. But is a common slur that we see on this board too from atheiests. This was not surprising to me

.

4. Harris threw out lots of red herrings to distract from the Q. He threw out accusations, lies about what christians really believe and distorted things written in the bible. This is also a common mode of attack for athiests.

All in all, it was a good debate. Did not change my Christian views in any way.

[jlay]

They've been playing several debates lately on NRB network, yet haven't seen one with WLC. I have read transcripts of some of his though.

"Well, objective morality exists because it's OBVIOUS to any SANE person what is objectively moral!"

That is a pretty weak response, and a flawed one at that. That isn't an explanation of why morality exist. Saying it is obvious only demands the question, "why is it obvious?" And 2ndly, "what makes it objective?"

Also, it simply isn't true. There are plenty of sane people who would argue about what is moral. Not everybody in prison is insane. Also shows a bit of a fundemental lack of understanding regarding the meaning of objective.

Paul,
It's funny, the first example you posts is basically the guy saying that Craig is wrong because he is consistent in his arguments in such debates.

[The Protector]

They've been playing several debates lately on NRB network, yet haven't seen one with WLC. I have read transcripts of some of his though.

"Well, objective morality exists because it's OBVIOUS to any SANE person what is objectively moral!"

That is a pretty weak response, and a flawed one at that. That isn't an explanation of why morality exist. Saying it is obvious only demands the question, "why is it obvious?" And 2ndly, "what makes it objective?"

Also, it simply isn't true. There are plenty of sane people who would argue about what is moral. Not everybody in prison is insane. Also shows a bit of a fundemental lack of understanding regarding the meaning of objective.

Paul,
It's funny, the first example you posts is basically the guy saying that Craig is wrong because he is consistent in his arguments in such debates.

jlay,

I hasten to clarify that, despite my use of quotation marks in that instance, that was not actually a QUOTE from Harris, but rather my own summation. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, so perhaps I simply didn't understand him.

Paul,

Thank you for posting those. Still, I don't see any arguments for Harris' side that are particularly convincing. By that I don't mean merely that he hasn't convinced me, but that he has not put forward any arguments to refute Craig's objections. And in this debate it is Harris who is making the positive claim in dispute: That objective morals exist within a naturalistic framework (certainly, Craig believes several positive claims, but they are not at issue here). It doesn't matter how much Harris rails against the Christian view of moral values or duties or the Muslim view of moral values or duties or [what he thinks are] Craig's views of moral values or duties; if he cannot refute Craig's objections to his hypothesis, Harris loses the debate. As far as I could tell, Harris lost.

Essentially, Harris stance is this: Objective moral good is defined as maximal human (or conscious being) fourishing because I think it is self-evident, and if you disagree then you are either crazy or an idiot. Is this not his argument? When you boil away all the rhetoric about "The moral landscape" and the "peaks and valleys of human consciousness," is this not what is at the foundation of his argument? What am I missing here?

By the way, I love this one: "this is what i expected him to do, confuse the debate by going philosophical, demand Harris clean it up, build upon all points which is not cleaned up." Oh, that dirty William Lane Craig! Going all philosophical at a philosophical debate-- what an underhanded trick!

[MarcusOfLycia]

Watching the debate was pretty good, but like I said the comments were more than worthless. I really do feel like they got my blood boiling for no reason at all. I found things criticizing everything Craig said, from using the holocaust as an example (someone thought this was tantamount to a logical fallacy), to things you've pointed out. I wonder, if atheists could see this a little more objectively, would they see that their behavior matches at times Christian behavior? Some people defended Craig in areas he wasn't as strong just because they were against Harris. So... it points to the fact that atheists behave the same as theists a lot of the time. The one major difference I saw was that the atheist crowd, at least on Youtube... was so hateful it was painful to read without wanting to smack the monitor.

Some genius decided to post how he thought WLC was a child molestor, and it started this whole thread of people repeating it because they hate the guy. I saw more Ad Hominem attacks than actual quotes used by Craig in the comment section, pro or con. I can only imagine what its like for a Christian who doesn't have very strong faith who is under attack from these scumbags.

[Reactionary]

Some genius decided to post how he thought WLC was a child molestor, and it started this whole thread of people repeating it because they hate the guy.

...and what a surprise, his comment turned out to become top-rated.

What he meant to say is, if I interpreted it right, that you can state that someone is a child molestor, without evidence, but because you have faith.
Again -

I saw more Ad Hominem attacks than actual quotes used by Craig in the comment section, pro or con. I can only imagine what its like for a Christian who doesn't have very strong faith who is under attack from these scumbags.

As long as they resort to ad hominem attacks, it means they don't have a better weapon.

One thing that surprised me though, is that the video was very positively rated. It can only mean one thing - atheists think that Harris won the debate, otherwise they would have turned the "like" bar red in no time, just like they do with any philosophical video that doesn't attack Christianity.