Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Stenger vs. Craig in Honolulu, HI

In this debate Craig makes his usual five arguments and Victor Stenger (to his everlasting credit) stands out as one of Craig's fairly few freethinking foes to frankly address each of them during his rebuttal period.  However, Stenger’s positive arguments are relatively weak, or at least not nearly as strong as those we have seen from stronger debaters such as Tabash and Dacey.   Moreover, Stenger has a bit of trouble parrying Craig’s well-aimed rebuttals.  

I definitely got the sense that Stenger has his head wrapped around the fine-tuning problem, but it is by no means easy to articulate the answers without resorting to maths, which would doubtlessly lose the audience.  Not sure that this problem can be dealt with by explication in a time-constrained debate environment.  

Altogether, Stenger made a strong showing against a most formidable debater.

  • Unbeliever rating: 4.25 stars

  • Believer rating: 4.75 stars

  • Overall rating: 4.5 stars