Agnostic Popular Front - Debates

PZ Myers vs. Hamza Tzortzis in Dublin

2011-06-06T12:15:00.000-07:00

This is a very strange debate in terms of setup (spontaneous confrontation on a Dublin street) but I still have to count it in because of the stature of the two debaters in terms of their following in their respective communities.

PZ leads off by trashing an Islamic pamphlet, which prompts Hamza to start in on the KCA for a bit, but PZ quickly changes the subject to emphasize evidential arguments rather than philosophical arguments grounded in everyday metaphysical and causal intuitions. They dabble in rudimentary epistemology for a bit, and eventually Hamza starts in on the glorious revelation that is the Quran, with emphasis on the specifics of embryology. They go on about this for quite awhile, with the Muslims making the usual argument that the Koran is just too advanced to be the product of their founding prophet writing without the benefit of divine revelation.

Overall, this one was pretty fun to watch, if not particularly groundbreaking. I'd love it if this sort of thing happened every Friday night in Bricktown.

Hitchens vs. Lennox in Edinburgh

2011-05-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens debated John Lennox at the Edinburgh International Festival, on whether atheism will provide a viable future for Europeans. The file is available for purchase online, but I don't recommend that anyone buy anything from the Fixed Point Foundation. There are far too many free files available of comparable or superior quality to their events.

Christopher Hitchens leads by arguing that terrible things have happened in Europe as a result of religion, and then he makes the giant leap that only secularism can save the day. He might well be right, but he did not deductively or inductively connect his conclusion to his premises. It may well be true that Abrahamic religion poisons everything European, but this does not logically imply that either secularism or atheism will have a good shot at salvaging Europe from a rising tide of fundamentalism both Christian and Muslim.

John Lennox makes the case that the so-called "New Atheists" have confused the essential message of Christianity with the abuses perpetrated by the political powers of Christendom, which is at least partly true, and is undoubtedly true in the case of Hitchens himself. It is surely irrational to tar one’s opponents with too broad a brush, however, in the next breath Lennox writes off all secular moral reasoning as mere post-modern chatter, thus committing precisely the same breach of reasoning and etiquette, confounding his opponent’s actual positions with those of his least admirable comrades. It gets worse, however; as he goes on to confound humanism with communism. At this point, it becomes clear that this man may safely be dismissed as a wellspring of serious criticism. He eventually gets around to making an argument that we have to assume that the universe was created in order to discover that it is intelligible. He goes on to talk about ethics for just a bit, claiming that our innate revulsion at certain actions must come from the God of Abraham rather than mere natural selection, an argument which might work on audiences ignorant of both cultural anthropology and the fallacy of the false dilemma. He closes by saying that if we cannot have eternal Heavenly justice, there is no point at all in seeking temporal Earthly justice. In summary, Lennox sounds almost as rhetorically smooth as Hitchens, but his arguments are somehow even less coherent.

The rebuttals are muddled and scattershot, but what else might one expect, given the lack of argument heretofore?

Overall, this debate elevates style over substance and rhetoric over logic. This is (alas) not terribly unusual in such debates, but this event really takes it to a whole new level. Both speakers manage to sound quite intelligent without ever making even one inductively or deductively valid argument. Good lord below, I’ve done my mind a disservice by slogging through this one.

Hitchens vs Richards at Stanford U.

2011-05-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens debated Jay Richards (video, audio) over the particular question of theism versus atheism, but they managed to stray far and wide during the course of the event.

As usual, Hitchens puts out a crazy salad of very well-worded emotional appeals, but doesn't bother to show how any of his arguments should lead one to conclude either materialism or deism. He leave the hard work of sorting out his facts into an argument with a conclusion to his listeners, which I suppose may be an acceptable mode of instruction at an institution such as Stanford. Nevertheless, I was (as always) far more impressed with his style than with his substance. Even when he alludes to a good argument (e.g. the problem of evil) he doesn't flesh out the deductive structure thereof.

Richards, by contrast, gives several facially valid arguments in rapid succession, and appeals to natural human intuitions (such as the intuition that moral statements are universally binding, or the intuition that everything that begins to exist has a cause, or the intuition that anthropic coincidences must imply design) to make his case both efficiently and effectively.

As usual, Hitchens recovers significantly during the Q & A, but he never comes close to countering the serene and methodological approach of his opponent, and his frustration (or lack of sobriety) shows through on a few occasions. It was a bit sad to watch, really. With the exception of the Hitchens/Craig debate, I've never seen the Hitch so thoroughly beaten.

Overall rating: 3.5 stars
Believer rating: 5 stars
Unbeliever rating: 2 stars

Harris vs Fraser in London

2011-04-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/sam-harris/

Sam Harris leads off with three reasons that people argue he is wrong about the (essentially utilitarian) nature of moral talk:

At least some religions are true

At least some religions are useful

Atheism is unpleasant and corrupting

Harris rejects these contentions and goes on to present essentially the same opening statement as he did in his recent debate against W.L. Craig, making the case that the science of ethics is essentially a systematic study of how to maximize mental health, just as the science of medicine is essentially a systematic study of how to maximize physical health, and neither should be considered unscientific on account of the fact that both fields strive to maximize human well-being in an attempt to fulfill widely shared values.

Giles Fraser leads off with a bizarre and highly metaphysical critique of utilitarianism, bringing out the nasty old utility-monster from some dark corner of his mind. For some reason, Fraser considers this retort so effective that he doesn't really expound upon any other critique.

Harris and Fraser go back and forth on this a bit, and Harris basically concede that beings who are more richly capable of joy and suffering really should count for more than beings (e.g. cockroaches) who are less capable of such subjective experiences. I'm confused as to why Fraser thinks this is such a problem, unless he is suggesting that theism is basically the same as utility-monsterism. Perhaps this might yet be so, if the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu ever gets their way.

The debate goes downhill a bit from here, until Fraser and Harris get into it over the nature and utility of moral philosophy in general. On this point, Harris does three interesting things: he explains why he avoids the traditional modes of philosophical ethical talk, he clarifies that he does indeed consider himself a philosopher, and declares that he is willing to personally engage the traditional moral philosophers, even if he refuses to write books as they do.

Fraser's next serious challenge is about Harris' repeated use of the phrase "conscious creatures" but it falls fairly flat when Sam explains that he is simply making room for the possibilty of non-human suffering.

I've got to comment for just a second on the first question in the Q&A. This smarmy little bastard stands up and says "What is the scientific reason to care about the well being of conscious creatures?" I'm beginning to lean towards the notion that there is only one correct answer to this question, and it is to walk calmly over to the questioner, stop calmly just short of an arm's length away, and bitch-slap his ass into next week. After all, if he has the sheer cheek to seriously suggest that I should not be concerned about his subjective experience of suffering, why not just take him at his word? I've got to admit, though, that the answer given by Harris was more cogent and persuasive.

Overall, it was a good talk, but it was clear that Harris performs significantly better when up against a worthy opponent such as Craig than he does when facing, well, someone like Fraser.

Harris vs. Craig at Notre Dame

2011-04-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

Last night I was well-filled with cheap pizza and pricey booze, and much like the Biblical character Boaz on the threshing floor, perhaps not in the best possible condition to make a dispassionate and rational assessment of the situation. With that caveat out of the way, I have to say that I thought Sam Harris pretty much held his own against William Lane Craig last night. I'll put up a more detailed review whenever I find an mp3 copy, but here are my first impressions for now.

Openings

Craig makes the argument that morality must be objective, not in the usual sense of the term, but rather in the sense of being universally binding upon all persons on account of what he calls a "Competent Authority" by which he means the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Here is the argument in deductive form:

1. Objective morality requires moral rules laid down by God.

2. Objective morality, in this sense, really does exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

The argument is deductively valid, but both of the premises are evidently false. Craig's argument for the first premise is essentially that morality can only be understood as a set of rules laid down by an authority figure. He begs the question really hard here, but he does it with the flair of a showman and the conviction of a true believer. Craig's argument for the second premise relies on the audience not noticing when Craig makes the subtle shift from the almost universal moral outrage at the examples he provides to the idea the we cannot be properly outraged unless God is as well. Okay, well it doesn't sound at all subtle when I put it that way, but I promise he does is smoothly.

Harris, for his part, tries to make the case that we should not think of morality as binding rules handed down from above, but rather as a set of ideas derived from our best scientific understanding of how to bring about the flourishing (and avoid the suffering) of conscious and sentient creatures such as ourselves. He makes a strong analogy with the field of medicine and the idea of health versus illness. We assume that health is better for everyone, then we use science to derive ideas about how to get there, e.g. stop smoking, do your cardio, eat your vegetables, wear your rubbers, etc.

If you want a better sense of Harris' opening statement and basic arguments, you can have a look at this video or others like it, in which he stakes out his position and unpacks a sort of simplified utilitarianism for the 21st century.

Rebuttals

During the rebuttals, I noticed that Craig retreated a bit further into philosopher mode, in which he seems to assume that everyone in the audience is taking an undergraduate degree in philosophy and can understand what he is saying even when he doesn't bother define his terms. Meanwhile, Harris stuck with plain language, powerful analogies, and memorable one liners. He also takes a direct shot or two at Catholicism at Notre Dame. He falls short just a bit, though, when he failed to make it perfectly clear that this debate ultimately consists of a sematical struggle over what it means to act morally. The entire debate can be summed up thusly:

WLC: Morality consists in following rules issued from above

SH: No, morality consists in helping people because we happen to like people.

WLC: No, no no, it is all about binding rules from a Competent Authority.

SH: There is no such Authority, and have your read those rules? They are God awful.

WLC: OBEY GOD'S RULES!

SH: HELP OTHER PEOPLE!

And so forth. Basically, it comes down to the question of whether we are morally motivated by fear of God or by the love of people, and I have trouble believing that anyone showed up to the debate truly agnostic on this issue, because one has to settle the question of whether any gods exist before you can really get on with the moral arguments. I agree with John Loftus that the best anyone can do against Craig is break even, but I have to give Sam Harris major props for very nearly doing so, especially on a topic like morality, where both our language and our intuitions are strongly biased towards a dualistic and theistic understanding.

Krauss vs Craig at NCSU

2011-03-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

Every time Craig debates someone new, I get my hopes up that maybe this time he will have finally met his match. Alas, I am consistently disappointed, and this event proves (yet again) that scientific genius and lecturing skills are not sufficient for debate.

Opening statements
Craig leads with five arguments, as usual, almost but not quite the usual five. Is he evolving, perhaps just a little bit?

His first argument is one which depends on the validity of an arbitrary conceptual distinction between contingent and non-contingent existence, one which he does not attempt to support but merely assumes. Basically, everything that we know exists, exists contingently, that is, it could have been otherwise. However, we really like the idea that something exists necessarily, and although we have no evidence to suggest that this is indeed an actual mode of existence, we can safely assume that God exists in this way.

His second argument relies on the impossibility of actual infinite regress. Seems like this argument should conclude that space-time itself is finite and bounded, rather than divinely ordained, but Craig manages some clever rhetorical legerdemain here to distract the audience from this conclusion and over to the theistic hypothesis. He slides into a basic Kalam argument here, in which (as per usual) he equivocates between "cause" meaning what it is usually taken to mean, that is "natural forces rearranging existing matter into new form over time" and instead uses the term in a completely different novel and metaphysical sense. I know he has been called out on this before, so it seems downright dishonest at this point to keep banging on the same old drum.

His third argument is the usual argument from fine-tuning. The key premise here is this: "We now know that life-prohibiting universes are incomprehensibly more probable than any life-permitting universe." How can we know this? To calculate the probability of any given event, we need to have enough samples of that event taking place in order to mathmatically estimate the probability density function of the underlying natural process, this is essentially what we mean when we use the word probable in its technical sense. What Craig is implicitly claiming here is that he has observed so many universes created that he now has a good sense of which particular fundamental universal constants determine all the major features of a universe, the ranges of those few fundamental constants, and what their histograms look like within their possible ranges. Sythesizing all these observations together, Craig can mathematically estimate the apriori probability of an ensemble of fundamental constants which would allow for some variety of self-reproducing molecules, carbon-based or otherwise. In other words, Craig has the sort of knowledge which we might only expect of all-knowing transcendent beings, since these are the only sort of conscious observers who could possibly witness multiple universes coming into being and either generating life or failing to do so. Therefore, we can safely assume that if Craig is indeed correct in his unique assertion of precise mathematical knowledge regarding the probability distrubition of fundamental universal constants, He is in fact God incarnate. QED.

Craig's fourth argument is the usual argument from objective moral values. It goes like this:

If God does not exist, objective moral values cannot exist

But objective moral values do exist

Therefore God exists

Of course, by "objective moral values" Craig really means values which are universally valid because they are held by a universal mind. Sort of begging the question a bit there, eh?

Craig's fifth and final argument is the argument from the gospels. He makes his usual minimal facts argument, by which he takes certain of key facts of the gospels to be true and thereby concludes that other key facts from the gospels are also true. Of course, there are plenty of biblical scholars who see it very differently. Krauss starts out his case by making it clear that he intends to be combative and even a bit of an arse. That doesn't bode well, and it goes a bit downhill from there, when Krauss starts lecturing on QM, a subject which I usually enjoy. Once again, it seems that Dr. Craig showed up for a debate while his learned opponent cannot help but fall back into lecture mode. Por el amor de Dios, why does this keep happening? Does no one ever heed Luke's warning? Does Krauss actually make any coherent atheological arguments at all? Eventually, Krauss stops lecturing and gets around to attempting a few rebuttals of Craig's alleged evidence. Just for reference this is what a rebuttal should look like:

Here is the key premise in my opponent’s argument: *quotes premise*

Here is why it is false: *makes argument*

Alternately, one could show how a given argument is deductively invalid, on account of an equivocation or some similar problem. By my estimation, Krauss makes no affirmative arguments for the truth of metaphysical naturalism, and only attempts to falsify only one or two of Craig's arguments before running out of time. Typical professorial logorrhea has claimed yet another skeptical public speaker, and yet again I find myself reaching for the blood pressure meds.

Rebuttals
Craig cannot seem to find any particular argument to rebut, so he just picks out a few particualr claims made by Krauss and rebuts those. For example, he takes apart the notion that nothing is unstable. He also has a go at both Krauss' moral views, claiming that without Someone transcendant to whom humans are finally morally accountable, morality must be ultimately down to our own human values. Krauss leads his rebuttals with the statement that we do not know how the universe began, and we should do more science on the problem rather than simply filling in the epistemic gap with a divine miracle. This is actually a fairly decent retort to both the cosmological and teleological arguments, both of which depend upon a default to theism in the lack of a working scientific theory. Such a theistic default may well be irrational, but Craig has "common sense" on his side here, as evidenced by the fact that almost all human cultures continually propogate the meme of immaterial minds.

Throughout the rebuttal periods, Craig continually calls out Krauss for failing to rebut his opening, and eventually Krauss gets around to addressing most of it. Some of this he does well, some of it not so well. Krauss is clearly comfortable talking about cosmology and much less so when dealing with philosophy and history. Even so, Craig manages to hold his own on account of a fundamental asymmetry built into the nature of cosmology. It would take Krauss a load of time to properly flesh out a working multiverse hypothesis and connect it to first principles of quantum mechanics, but it only takes Craig half a minute to appeal to human intuitions about infinity and first causes.

Lessons learned
I've always said that no one should debate Craig without first reading up on his usual arguments and coming prepared to rebut them swiftly and effectively. That applies here as well, and it is clear that Krauss did not take Craig seriously enough to prepare for his usual arguments, since the only arguments that were well-rebutted were those in Krauss' own area of expertise, that is, fine tuning and cosmology. But there is another lesson here: Never go into a debate in which you are called upon solely to rebut the evidence for theism. Krauss never once makes an affirmative case for naturalism, and it is unclear whether this is due to unpreparedness on his part or because of the way he allowed the debate to be framed. Either way, it is damn sloppy.

Overall rating: 3.0
Believer rating: 4.5
Unbeliever rating: 1.5

Dillahunty vs. Comfort on the Atheist Experience (radio)

2011-03-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

I don't usually watch or listen to The Atheist Experience, but on the advice of a good friend of mine, I listened to the latest episode this morning, in which the hosts go back and forth with Ray Comfort on any number of issues, including the Bible, creation/evolution, abortion, true Christianity, direct knowledge of God, moral arguments, the existence of souls, and so on. Basically they run the whole gamut, with Ray making arguments and the hosts shooting them down. As usual, Ray Comfort is invincibly ignorant and unable to muster a single cogent argument which doesn't simply beg the question that he is addressing. All attempts to provide him with either facts or counterarguments roll off his back like water off a croco-duck. Also as usual, the show hosts are well-prepared but scattershot. They don't focus on any one issue long enough to be enlightening, with the single exception of a lengthy remediation covering 10th grade biology. There is one lesson to be learned here, however, and it is this: Skeptics will inevitably sound uncertain when compared with true believers, because people of faith demand certainty and then hold on to that certainty despite any evidence. Skeptics demand doubt, and are constantly willing to reassess theories.

Prescott vs. Kern on Christian Nationalism

2011-02-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

Photo by David Wheelock

Last night, Drs. Kern and Prescott debated whether the U.S. Constitution had founded a Christian Nation. Here is the abridged audio, and here is the full video.

After listening to the debate, a few questions naturally spring to mind. Perhaps most saliently, one must ask what exactly are these uniquely Christian principles upon which Dr. Kern rested so many of his arguments? Are there any moral principles which one finds in the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth which are not to be found elsewhere in pre-Christian religions (e.g. Animism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Dionysianism, etc.)? If so, where are these uniquely Christian principles to be found in the U.S. Constitution?

Secondly, why should the letters or speeches of individual founders (e.g. Patrick Henry or Gouverneur Morris) be considered final and authoritative as to the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, especially when said founders were expressing themselves on matters unrelated thereto? If modern church-state integrationists do not consider it acceptable to take Jefferson's "wall of separation" metaphor to be authoritative because it was written in a private letter to a Baptist church, why should Morris' unpublished draft of a Constitution for France carry more weight? At least it may be said of Jefferson that he was reflecting upon the potential of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. By contrast, Morris was proposing a wholly new set of rules for a strikingly different cultural context, even as (back across the pond) the original thirteen States were busily discussing and ratifying the First Amendment.

Finally, it should be noted that Dr. Kern brings up a completely new topic when he moves on from the Constitution and its drafters to the late 20th century, attempting to draw a causal connection between secularism and some of the more unfortunate consequences of the sexual revolution. This is a fascinating topic in and of itself, and while it is irrelevant to the debate last night, might well merit further inquiry in another forum.

Overall, both men did a fine job of defending their respective positions, however, Dr. Kern had a much harder time of it because the facts were almost wholly against him, given that the proposition under contention was about whether the Constitution was intended to found a secular or religious republic.

Law vs. McGrath on the radio (UK)

2011-02-05T23:45:00.000-08:00

While this show is founded on a concept which I find irresitably appealing (Christians and non-Christians in conversation and debate), I've found myself generally critical of the show for failing to achieve intellectual and airtime balance between the unbelieving guest and the apologist(s) for religion. This episode is a happy exception, in which both debaters are equally bright and articulate. I definitely recommend this episode, if not the entire podcast.

Alister McGrath defends the ideas he has published in Why God Won't Go Away while Stephen Law assures that McGrath has to put up a geniune defense. They also manage to agree on some key propositions about how discourse and debate ought to be conducted. They also go back and forth a bit on theodicy and the problem of evil, which is clearly one of Law's pet arguments.

There is a fantastic bit around half an hour into the show when Law poses the following question, "What it is, actually, that the Holy Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, all had in common?" Well, that is something to chew on.

Williamson vs. Craig at University of Saskatchewan

2011-02-04T05:40:00.000-08:00

If you've already seen the earlier debate between these two men, you'll find this debate to be highly repetitious of those same arguments. At least Williamson seems a bit more prepared this time.

Craig starts out very strong, giving his usual five highly-polished arguments for theism. No surprises there.

Williamson starts out weak, fumbling about for a bit, speaking haltingly, and seemingly generally ill-prepared. I experienced a sinking feeling at this point, but he goes on to put together a few interesting arguments, one of which was an unusual presentation of a form of incompatible properties argument. Points for novelty at least.

On rebuttal, each speaker does a fine job ot tearing apart their opponent's arguments. Indeed, Williamson's rebuttal demonstrates that he did his homework, immediately singling out one of Craig's premises and demonstrating how that particular premise begs the question in favor of theism, and giving some reasons to doubt the premise itself. This is generally a good model for how to rebut deductive arguments put forward for theism. (His rebuttal of the fine-tuning argument could have been better, by providing an argument showing how the universe may have been naturally finely-tuned, and not conceding so much ground to Craig.)

Here is an example of what that rebuttal technique might look like in practice:
Craig's argument from objective moral values assumes that morality can only be "objectively real" if it is grounded in the mind of a transcendent moral being, which we call God. Thus, by claiming that morality is indeed objective (in this peculiar sense of the term) Craig is claiming that god exists, right up front in one of his premises. But this is precisely the question under discussion, and so we should be debating instead about the actual nature of moral value, rather than simply assuming that they are transcendent in the theistic sense which Craig supposes.

After the rebuttal period, the two debaters cross-examine each other for awhile, a format which I always enjoy. Craig gets the better of Williamson here, but it wasn't terribly one-sided.

Overall, it was a decent debate in which both sides were examined in some depth, but better arguments for naturalism exist, and may be found in better debates.

Here is another view.

Overall rating: 4.0
Believer rating: 4.5
Unbeliever rating: 3.5

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

2011-01-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

The brain trust over at the Templeton Foundation put together a series of essays and debates on the question of whether science is finally putting theism out to pasture. It is worth checking out if you've some spare time for reading thoughtful essays covering the entire gamut of possible responses.

Muehlhauser vs. Gressis on CPBD podcast

2010-11-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

I don't usually review podcasts on this blog, but this episode of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot is absolutely worth a listen. It is probably best characterized as a causal discussion about the respective worldviews of Christian theism and metaphysical naturalism, but with a much lower level of animosity and significantly higher level of philosophical rigor than one can reasonably expect from a formal debate. The two interlocutors go back and forth, discussing sundry topics and questioning each other freely and spontaneously. I'd prefer to hear more debates adopt this format, at least for 20-30 minutes following the opening statements.

Kaminer vs Otitoju on the IQ2 (podcast)

2010-11-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/quick-debates/protecting-free-speech-is-more-important-that-preventing-hate-speech

Freethinker and civil rights activist Wendy Kaminer makes a clear and cogent argument for untrammeled free speech, while Femi Otitoju makes the consequentialist argument that hate speech leads to more hate and invariable more hateful and hurtful actions. Strong arguments presented well from on both sides, on a vital issue which should be of interest to all right thinking people.

Alas, it is a rather short debate (didn't even last for my entire one-way commute) but certainly it is well worth the time.

Dillahunty vs. Jacobse at UMBC

2010-11-16T22:22:00.000-08:00

This debate flows primarily from a difference of opinion regarding what the word 'morality' should be taken to mean. Predictably enough, the atheist believes that morality is an instrumental package of norms useful for humans to get along and thrive on Earth, while the theist believes that morality is a set of transcendent truths which exist in a supernatural realm accessible to us only by mystical experience or divine revelation. They each make their respective cases reasonably well, but for the most part they are talking past each other about different ideas.

Both speakers are notably jolly and upbeat, which is a nice change of pace. Possibly this is the most friendly debate I've seen since the one at UCO back in 2003. I'm sure that I've never heard someone accuse atheism of the 20th century genocides in such a friendly and deferential manner as Fr. Jacobse.

On a side note, the video production values on this are through the roof for a student-produced YouTube video, which bumps my rating up just a bit.

Law vs. Plantinga on the radio (UK)

2010-11-13T08:08:00.000-08:00

Alvin Plantinga leads with the idea that naturalism does not entail the observation of fine-tuning in the universe, whereas theism makes fine-tuning probable. I have to point out here that (as brilliant as he is) he gets this perfectly backwards. On naturalistic monism, observers cannot possibly exist unless at least part of some universe is so finely tuned as to allow for them to evolve naturally. On theistic dualism, observers exist as minds entirely apart from any sort of fine-tuned cosmos which might allow for the possibilty of organic matter walking about and pumping blood to their brains. In short, naturalism necessitates the observation of fine tuning, if naturalism is true and any actual observers exist at any time and place in any universe. By contrast, theism is not linked to fine-tuning at all, unless we include the downright bizarre premise that the god of theism is a bit of a deistic chap, and prefers to create a seemingly naturalistic world which runs all by itself according to fixed natural laws.

That aside, Plantinga came on the show not to confuse the listeners about cosmological fine-tuning, but rather to confuse them about the relationship between metaphysical naturalism, evolution, and the probability of some animals evolving reliable cognitive mechanisms. This he does quite well, by repeating the startingly claim that animal behavior is causally unrelated to animal beliefs about the world. Why does a cat or a dog or a human jump back and start pumping adrenaline when confronted by, say, an angry mama grizzly bear? Surely it is not because they believe themselves to be in danger. It must be for some other reason driven by neurology alone, without any regard to subjective experience. This decoupling of subjective experience and beliefs from behavior is the sort of thing that only a philosopher would dare to do, as it runs completely contrary to our actual experience of how these things really work.

Enough ranting. This was a reasonably good introduction to the evolutionary argument against naturalism, and one which I'd recommend if only because one is bound to run across this argument from time to time.

Shermer & Ridley & Dawkins vs. Craig & Wolpe & Geivett in la ciudad de las ideas (Puebla, Mexico)

2010-11-11T20:02:00.000-08:00

This panel debate (YouTube) is unique in several ways. Firstly, it is bilingual, with direction and narration in Spanish, and substantive debate in English. Secondly, it features three men on each side but only gives each one a few minutes at a time to make an argument. Thirdly, the speakers talk in front of what appears to be the world's largest 1980's themed screensaver including flying polygons. Finally, the lectern is in a boxing ring. No, really, an effing boxing ring. Evidently the Mexican version of TED talks have quite a bit more flair than the sober lectures they do here in the Estados Unidos.

Matt Ridley leads off with a decent joke which doesn't translate well to those unfamiliar with the idiomatic English meaning of "recreational area" and then briefly makes the case for emergent order as opposed to top-down design, in both society and the biosphere more generally.

Craig, as per usual, makes the case that purposes which don't last forever just aren't worth having, that if we don't have a holy being to obey and worship forever, then everything must be meaningless. Evidently, he values servitude so much as to make it the end all be all of human existence. He goes on to (somewhat idiosyncratically) define "evil" in strictly theistic terms and then smoothly equivocate by claiming that atheist must therefore claim that there is no evil in the world, in the ordinary sense of the term. Clever rhetoric, to be sure, but as a philosopher he has to know better than to think this is a valid mode of argument. Finally, he briefly lists his usual five arguments for theism.

Shermer wastes some time upfront by talking about wishful thinking and the prosperity gospel, but then gets into his own case for purpose in a naturalistic world. He lists a few purposes which available to ordinary people leading ordinary lives without the hope of eternal life, and he does so fairly well. He might ought to have pointed out that most people spend the vast majority of their lives pursuing such ordinary purposes, rather than grovelling at the feet of their favored deity.

Wolpe argues that the debate ought to be about whether the universe as a whole has a purpose, and suggests (without a hint of embarrassment) that the purpose of the entire cosmos and its billions of galaxies and quadrillions of stars was to eventually produce people who will come to know and worship the God of the Hebrews, which just happens to be the his personal area of expertise. He does have one memorable line, though, in which he says that one might say the universe has purpose in the sense that the kitchen has a meal, that is, it has all the ingredients needed to create purposes. True, and what is more, a decent summary of the thrust of Shermer's talk.

Dawkins leads by insultingly comparing the opposing panel to children who have never grown out of the having of believing that everything can be explained in terms of what purpose it serves. He then gets into the nature of designed objects, which have a given purpose, and designoid objects, which merely seem to have one. At one point he accidentally gives away the farm by calling natural selection a "brilliant process" which makes it seem purposive, unless he meant "brilliant" in some sense more about luminosity than intelligence. Overall, he makes a decent case that we can explain everything in the universe without resorting to any universal purposes, especially with respect to living things.

They then go into rebuttal period, in which it becomes clear that the theistic bench has put somewhat more time into teamwork and planning so as to create a flow between their arguments with little overlap. Nevertheless, both sides have a go at the other side, and as usual, Craig is polished and precise, while Dawkins is scathing and condescending.

Overall, this is a must-see debate, no because of the substance so much as the style. I personally prefer dry and cultured Oxford style debate, but as they say, en la variedad está el gusto.

IQ2 panel debate - Is Britian becoming anti-Christian?

2010-11-03T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/stop-bashing-christians

While this debate will primarily interest citizens of the UK, I recommend it for everyone, because the challenges faces by Britian now will eventually have to be met by other socieities in the process of secularising.

George Carey
Focuses on specific examples of Christians being disallowed special exceptions from laws of general application in Britian.

Geoffrey Robertson
Makes the case for equal treatment, and argues that Christians often think the are being persecuted by the state whenever it is merely "insuring that idiosyncratic and bigoted Christians don't bash gays and other minorities at the public expense."

Howard Jacobson
Makes a witty and humorous case that Christianity singlehandedly civilised pagan Britian. You can tell he is an effective author and that he wrote all his comments out in advance.

Matthew Parris
Leads off with a few quips and then launches into an argument for general non-discrimination on ethnic, racial, and religious grounds, and for the historical degradation of this principle on the part of the established churches. "Bashed indeed. We gays know something about being bashed." He ends with "Give them the tolerance that they would never give you, but give them not an inch more." His is the most persuasive speech of this debate, IMHO.

Peter Hitchens
First he humorously mocks his opponents, and goes on to lead the audience in prayer and exhort them to humlity. From there it gets even more bizarre.

Antony Sutch
This benedictine monk makes an argument which has to be heard to be believed. He asserts that Britian is a generally tolerant place, and not to worry overmuch about the increasing diversity of thought and belief.

Conclusion
The listener can safely skip past the Q&A period, which was most often either pointless or embarrassing (or both) and move on the closing statements at 1:33 or thereabouts.

Comments
This debate provides Americans with a glimpse of the rearguard action that Christians will invariably mount in the face of increasing societal and political irrelevance, which we've already seen here in popular works such as this one.

Hitchens vs. Dembski in Plano, TX

2010-11-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

Hitchens makes the usual case that the vicissitudes and suffering on Earth make far more sense on naturalism than on classical theism. He also appeals to certain historical persons and ideas, as is his wont. I didn't find anything particularly striking about how Hitch makes his case, but I've seen him so many times now that it's all starting to blend together, and since there is no evident structure to his rhetoric it is difficult to summarize. At this point, I would challenge anyone to create a formally valid and sound argument using only lines from Hitchen's opening statements, in any order. Seriously, I don't think it can be done.

Dembski does his usual tutorial on intelligent design, and goes on to make the argument that if there is no divine lawgiver then there cannot be any "objective" values that matter at all, to anyone, anywhere. By objective, presumably he does not mean that which is the property of an object (thing) rather than a subject (mind), since only minds can even ponder moral propositions, much less have ideas about which moral statements are true. He must mean "non-human" values, but those don't sound appealing to anyone. Perhaps he means "divine" values, in which case he is simply begging the question. He also makes a few other question-begging arguments, such as God is good because "good" means whatever God wants. At this point, I can imagine the schoolchildren in the audience sending little "ROFLMAO" texts to one another.

As usual, Hitchens excels in rebuttal. "Morality doesn't come in tablet form" is only one of many memorable quips. The Q&A was acceptable, but overall I found this to be a wearying debate, and isn't worth seeing unless you are somehow unfamiliar with the ideas of these two debaters.

Fox vs. Behe on the radio (UK)

2010-10-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

I really shouldn't review this show on this blog, because it was a debate between Christians over which particular view of creationism one should take. Keith Fox argued for evolution acting on countless generations of life over eons of time via natural selection acting upon random divinely-permitted mutations within a divinely-finely-tuned universe, while Michael Behe argued for evolution acting on countless generations of life over eons of time via natural selection acting upon non-random divinely-directed mutations within a divinely-finely-tuned universe.

Um, yeah. Huge theoretical gap there, with loads of room for argument. You may safely skip this one, unless you want to hear two biochemists arguing about theology.

Ahmed vs. Peoples on the radio (UK)

2010-10-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

This debate focuses on a moral argument for the existence of god, and ultimately comes down to an inference from moral intuitions to universal divine commands or divine moral preferences.

Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed debated Christian philosopher Glenn Peoples on Premier Christian Radio, on the topic of moral arguments for god.

Roughly, Peoples makes following argument:

1) If moral facts exist, they must have either a supernatural or natural basis
2) Moral facts do not have a natural basis
3) :. If moral facts exists, they have a supernatural basis
4) The most plausible supernatural basis of moral facts is a supernatural person
5) :. If moral facts exist, they are based in a supernatural person
6) Moral facts exist
7) :. A supernatural person exists

Editorial comment - This argument heavily loads the dice by taking moral facts to be propositions in the mind of a divine being, and then equivocating between moral facts (thus defined) and the ordinary human moral intuitions shared by most everyone who is not a sociopath. The obvious naturalist response might be that moral facts ought to be derived from causal connections between certain actions and their probable results.

Ahmed retorts to Peoples formal argument firstly by denying premise (6), explicating his honest (if highly unpopular) view that moral facts are not really facts in the ordinary sense of the term. He basically makes the case that all actual moral imperatives are actually of the form "If you desire X then you should do Y." They both back and forth on the nature of morality for quite a bit, calming, politely, and without zinging around cheap one-liners (ala Hitchens or D'Souza). Incidentally, Peoples fulfills Godwin's Law around 20 minutes in.

Overall, this was a high-quality philosophical debate and discussion, relatively free of rhetorical flourishes, personal attacks, and other extraneous verbiage. Both guests are focused and well versed on the topic at hand, while the radio host is clearly and humorously out of his depth. Definitely this one is recommended listening.

Beahan vs. Knechtle in East Lansing, MI

2010-10-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

This debate between apologist Cliffe Knechtle and atheist Jeremy Beahan took place at Michigan State University and ranged over a vast variety of topics, from general arguments for and against theism, to free will, to incompatible properties of god, to in-depth historical analysis of the gospels and other historical sources. Almost all of the usual arguments are covered, and then some, because the debate format demanded short bursts from each speaker under very strict timekeeping.

For once, an atheist clearly owns an apologist, and that despite the apologist's usual appeals to cleverly unsound arguments, irrational intuitions, and personal outrage. Jeremy calmly and methodically dismantles Knechtle's arguments, quickly and effectively showing precisely where such arguments are either invalid or unsound. Accordingly, he has been added to my atheist debate dream team, alongside Arif Ahmed.

This is a must hear debate, and the only thing keeping it from a 5 star rating is that Knechtle occasionally makes some of his arguments in a weaker form than I'm used to hearing elsewhere. You should probably listen to it now. Share and enjoy!

Overall rating: 4.5
Believer rating: 4.0
Unbeliever rating: 5.0

Melville vs. McGrath on the radio (UK)

2010-10-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

For the most part this episode (mp3) fails to spark an actual debate, certainly not a debate about the so-called new atheism. Melville, the atheist proponent, argues primarily for secularism. He also dismisses Sam Harris as a reactionary Islamophobe before going on to characterize an Islamic upbringing in which one book has all the answers as "a nightmare scenario." Melville also criticizes prominent atheists for being too shrill and blunt, which is just accomodationist drivel. Around 45 minutes in, the Melville and McGrath finally get around to having something resembling a debate, but not about the subject of the new atheism, and even then Melville remphasizes that he is not defending any particular truth.

I'd have preferred a discussion which focused on some particular truth claim and examined the evidence for and against it. Perhaps that happened once or twice in this episode, but only incidentally and in passing.

Penrose vs. McGrath on the radio (UK)

2010-09-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

This episode was about theology, cosmology, and Stephen Hawking's new book, and featured two bright men who really know their stuff.

They talk about physics and theories of cosmology for a bit, and it's fun to hear, but this show doesn't quite rise to the level of a theological debate, because the disputants don't really get into it over what (if anything) we can say about the causes of the material universe from what we think we know about the universe itself. They touch on M-theories, cyclic cosmological theories, the anthropic principle, and various other fascinating ideas, but don't make an attempt to estimate the conditional probability that the universe might exist (in its current form) either with or without transcendental fine-tuning or some other divine design.

McCormick vs. DiSilvestro at CSUS (Debate #3)

2010-09-22T16:20:00.000-07:00

This time, McCormick leads off with the question of whether the historical evidence of Jesus' miracles could be much improved over the current state of affairs. Here are a few suggested improvements in the historical evidence:

10) Use objective impartial observers
9) More evidence
8) Go big (bigger than withered figs and empty tombs)
7) Take human fallibility into account
6) Act Almighty, rather than tribal or provincial
5) Good fortune does not make for a miracle
4) Powerful feelings are not evidence of miracles
3) Pick a literate and educated audience for miracles
2) Avoid the placebo effect
1) Miracles should not look like magic tricks

Obviously, some of these are redundant and are meant to round out the list. It seems that 1, 6, 8, and 9 could all readily be filed under the single heading "Make your miracles incontrovertible and accessible to all humankind." For example, a massive Tetragrammaton flashing forth from dozens of supernovae might easily satisfy all four of these criteria, especially if the Lord were to put one over each celestial pole.

In any event, McCormick's conclusion is that we are reasonable in expecting far more convincing miracles from an Almighty God who really wants to get His Holy Word out to all the masses of humanity.

DiSilvestro contends that God probably has good reasons for failing to provide more persuasive miracles than those we find in the Christian Scriptures. His first reason is that people will not find necessarily more persuasive miracles more persuasive. His second reason is that providing indubitable miracles might "break a person or damage them in other ways." In support, he quotes a passage from the Screwtape Letters. Finally, DiSilvestro argues that the miracles and scriptures that God has revealed really are enough to allow for rational belief therein, especially when augmented by direct personal experience of God. He then closes with yet another glurge tale, this time from India. I suppse he has no idea how silly this makes him sound to skeptics.

After these openings, they go straight to Q&A, which wasn't that bad.

McCormick vs. DiSilvestro at CSUS (Debate #2)

2010-09-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Debate #2 – From Lourdes to Lazarus (Miracles and Probability)

McCormick leads off with some basics of NT scholarship: Who wrote what, when, with which sources, and such like. He goes on to grant, for the sake of argument, a number of miraculous events at Lourdes, France. He charitably calculates the ratio of actual miracles to claimed miracles to be .0000165, and thus deduces a provisional probability of eyewitnesses accurately reporting miracles. He then points out that generally illiterate and uneducated Iron Age peoples are far more credulous and apt to accept miracle claims than we moderns who have been inculcated with scientific skepticism, and provides a few more reasons not to believe the disciples' testimonies in particular, e.g. bereavement hallucinations, Asch effects, attention effects, and other demonstrable psychological issues which effect the reliability of eyewitness testimony. He goes on to talk for a bit about the gospel sources themselves and how they came together over a lengthy process of canonization. He wraps up with a slide called “An Amplification of Doubts” which is doubtlessly one of the most powerful visual summaries of the arguments against the resurrection of Jesus I've ever seen: Click here.

DiSilvestro again tries to draw convincing distinctions (relevant disanalogies) between Lourdes and the Biblical resurrection accounts, such as the idea that apostles were martyred for their beliefs. He does not cite particular martyrologies as sources, or mention when they were written or by whom. Speaking of disanalogies, he also makes up a few of analogies of his own, one from NBA all-stars, one from the beliefs of students or professors, one from innocent convicts, and one from pillow talk. None of these analogies come remotely close to the .0000165 ratio of reliable to unreliable reports, so they can all be readily dismissed. He does eventually hit this issue head on, however, claiming that miracle reports are far more reliable than McCormick has claimed, citing to various anecdotal and personal experiences. I found it a bit disturbing to hear a philosopher basically just passing on glurge stories. I'm downgrading the rating on this one just because the theist comes off as just plain silly for an extended period at this point, and this proves neither enjoyable nor enlightening. Well, okay, the supernatural blinking “PORNOGRAPHY” sign was kind of fun.

McCormick vs. DiSilvestro at CSUS (Debate #1)

2010-09-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

Debate #1 – Salem vs. Jerusalem (Miracles and Historical Evidence)

McCormick leads off with one of the most impressive take-downs of the gospel narrative I've ever witnessed, and bear in mind that by now I've watched over a hundred debates covering this subject at least in part. He compares the alleged miracles at Jerusalem (empty tomb and other events on account of supernatural magic) with the alleged miracles at Salem (sundry persons claiming they were bewitched in various ways) and concludes that by using the standard historical criteria one can be far more confident of the veracity of magic in Salem than in Jerusalem. He makes his case thoughtfully and thoroughly, and challenges the audience either to accept the magical hypothesis in both case, reject it in both cases, or else demonstrate why the evidence for Jerusalem is somehow stronger than that of Salem.

DiSilvestro, for his part, makes the same case as in his earlier debate, based on four alleged facts from the NT sources:

1)Jesus was buried honorably in the Arimathean’s tomb
2)On the following Sunday this very same tomb was found empty
3)Eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Jesus after his death and burial
4)The original disciples believed that Jesus arose from the dead

DiSilvestro goes on to make a case that demons and witches are real. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like McCormick has him in the corner, on the ropes, biting the bullet at this point. He then makes an argument that one ought to take the miracles of Jerusalem more seriously than those of Salem, for three reasons:

1) Disciples suffered for their own beliefs, the witches suffered for other's beliefs
2) There were hundreds of eyewitnesses in Jerusalem (if you believe Paul)
3) The Salem community repented of their beliefs and injustices

DiSilvestro closes with bit of a homily and gospel preaching.

This may be one of the first debates in which I've seen the minimal facts argument thoroughly flattened even though it was effectively presented. It seems that the best way to counter such an argument is not with an appeal to gospel discrepancies (as Ehrman usually does) or historical methodology in theory (as many others do) but rather by illustrating how historical methodology works in practice by applying the loose criteria of Biblical scholarship to more recent and well-documented events.

This one is a must see. Great job by both debaters!

Hitchens vs. Berlinski in Birmingham, AL

2010-09-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens versus David Berlinski. Need I say more? The most ostentatiously highbrow debate about theism and atheism of the 21st century, and it transpired, of all places, in Alabama. I know, right?

Both men manage to impart such a degree of authoritative superciliousness to their voices as to make weak-minded undergrads instantly believe everything either one has to say. This would blow out the motherboard of an early-model electric monk, seeing as they were not capable of simultaneously holding incompatible beliefs to be true. Undergrads are, thankfully, far more mentally flexible than electric monks.

Berlinski essentially makes the case that without the fear of God to hold people in check, they would be capable of all of the atrocities we saw from the various mass-murdering Communist regimes. Hitchens retorts that once people believe they have God on their side, they are equally capable of horrific acts of torture and murder. Both men are right, of course, but neither one quite draws out the underlying commonality between Hitler's purges, Stalin's purges, Pol Pot's purges, Torquemada's purges, and centuries of European witch hunts, presumably because they are each interested in making the case that the other side's mass persecutions and murders are somehow more significant.

Just to be clear, I will go ahead and state the obvious: People who faithfully follow a system of faith-based beliefs and believe they are the bearers of the One True Way will be willing commit any crime, however horrific, if it is justified within the faith which they hold. This goes for Fascism, Communism, Medieval Catholicism, Christian Nationalism, ancient Judaism, modern Wahhabism, and just about any other politicized philosophy which separates out a Chosen People and justifies their persecution of the Other in the name of the One True Way. Whether the faithful are blindly following the commands of gods or men doesn't really matter, what matters is that they are following blindly.

Okay, enough of my editorializing. I just wanted to make it quite clear why I found both of these debaters unpersuasive in their respective attempts to declare either theism or atheism to be invariably poisonous. Hitchens makes the case that theism inevitably leads to the worst atrocities of worst theistic regimes, while Berlinski makes the case that atheism inevitably leads to the worst atrocities of worst atheistic regimes. Neither one is nearly persuasive, but they both sound terribly smooth and learned and witty and cultured. If you value style at least as much as substance, this is the one to see. Otherwise, you can give it a miss.

Buckner vs. Tzortzis in London

2010-08-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

Debate: Islam or Atheism? With Hamza Tzortzis & Ed Buckner on Vimeo

This is a must see debate, if only to get a sense of how Islamic apologetics compare to Christian and Jewish apologetics, with which English speakers are doubtlessly more

Tzortzis runs an argument for the existence of God, which is not terribly original or interesting. He then provides two arguments for the truth of Islam, the second of which runs parallel to that of C.S. Lewis regarding Jesus, claiming that the Prophet is either deluded, a liar, or else he is telling the truth. His most interesting and detailed argument, however, was that the Arabic text of the Quran is so downright amazing that it is evidently a miracle in and of itself, as attested by experts in the relevant field of Arabic textual analysis. At the end of his opening statement, he pulls a dirty WLC-style debate trick, and requests that his opponent tear down his arguments for Islam before building an argument for atheism. Overall, though, he comes off as quite poised and polished.

Buckner leads with several minutes of ingratiation, which were a few minutes too many. Seems like a nice guy, though. Eventually, he gets down to a handful of briefly stated arguments, including an argument from divine hiddenness, theological incoherence, from evil and suffering, from the dominance of demography in theological biogeography, and a few others, none of which are fleshed out enough to make sense if you aren't already familiar with them, and none of which are stated in a deductively valid form.

On rebuttal, Tzortzis hammers away at Buckner, directly and forcefully countering his arguments. Buckner makes a pathetic attempt to counter Tzortzis, and ultimately fails to mount anything resembling a convincing counter-argument. I suspect that the mostly-Islamic audience went away happy and assured that their faith is far more rational than disbelief.

Three lessons may be learned from this debate:
1) Know your opponent's arguments in advance so that you can prepare your counterarguments
2) Do not debate against some religion unless you are familiar with it and the peculiar arguments that it puts forward
3) If your name is Ed Buckner, get off the debate circuit altogether.

Overall rating: 3.0
Believer rating: 4.5
Unbeliever rating: 1.5

Bradley vs Flannagan at Auckland U. (NZ)

2010-08-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HIIjOfuJZM

Ray Bradley comes not to praise God, but to bury Him. He does a bang up job of it, slowly grinding through the worst bits of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and demonstrating the total depravity and utter ruthlessness thereof. He lectures phlegmatically onward, building up a towering Argument from Evil firmly rooted in scripture and history. He characterizes the God of Abraham as “that than which no viler can be conceived” and does a fairly decent job of backing up his thesis.

Bradley then lays out the following statements for consideration (paraphrasing):

What God proposes for our beliefs and actions are what we ought to believe and act upon

In His Holy Scriptures, God commands various atrocities
(e.g. killing witches, gays, Canaanites, etc.)

It is morally wrong to command, cause, or condone such atrocities

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good (definitional premise)

A morally perfect being wouldn’t order us to do anything which is morally wrong

Bradley contends that sincere theists have to deny at least one of these premises, for the sake of logical consistency, and then unpacks the consequences of denying any of these premises. At the end of his opening, he challenges his interlocutor (and the audience member) to deny one of the five premises and deal with the consequences.

Matt Flannagan, for his part, defends a version of divine command theory (DCT), and claims that premise (3) assumes to the contrary that God is a moral agent having moral duties, rather than being a moral lawgiver whose commands are moral no matter how arbitrary or harmful they seem to us. He sort of paints himself into a corner here, falling firmly upon one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma. He also tries to reframe the genocidal and homicidal divine commands of the OT Scripture as wholly hyperbolic, and the NT references to a “Lake of Fire” as mere metaphysical metaphor. Nice try, Matt, but that's a no-go unless you can produce evidence that these passages were indeed taken as metaphors by their original audience in the relevant cultural context. For example, did the early Church Fathers who read the NT books in original Greek see it as a metaphor or parable? If so, who did so and in which epistle do they make this clear? Instead of taking such an honest approach, Flannagan cites to modern scholars who have an obvious motivation to soften the harshness of these ancient passages.

During their respective rebuttals, both men do a fine job of contending that the other debater fails to engage with their own particular conception of God and ethics, which seems about right. This is the only notably weak feature of this debate: Each man has defined the words “God” and “morality” in different ways, and thus they talk past each other a bit when arguing about the putative relationship between the two. Overall, though, this is a MUST SEE DEBATE.

Share and enjoy!

Frame vs. McGrath on the radio (UK)

2010-07-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

This debate between Martyn Frame and Joanna Collicut McGrath centered on the question of whether religious beliefs are a trick of the mind, that is, do they arise from inherent quirks in human thinking or do they result from the proper apprehension of actual supernatural reality? Both interlocutors are trained in psychology, but alas, neither one is an experienced religious visionary.

Frame contends that our religious beliefs are best explained in terms of a natural human propensity to over-detect for agency in nature, and to process agency-based explanations in a separate way from mechanical causal explanations. McGrath concedes some of the psychological phenomena mentioned by Frame, but will not allow that theism is so readily dismissed. Then they have a pleasant if a bit rambling discussion on such matters for about an hour. This one really isn't a debate, more like conversational easy listening. Still, they do make the occasional good point and there is a bit of give and take.

Blackmore vs. Foster on the radio (UK)

2010-07-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

I have to give Justin Brierly credit for getting two serious experts in the studio this time around, and giving them the chance to discuss in some detail about the science and subjectivity of mystical experience. Also, he gets credit for the only mention of the phrase "anally raped by dinosaurs" on Christian radio, anywhere at any time.

Charles Foster argues for the veracity of personal religious experience, describing his own encounter with the numinous and saying that "I came away full of something..." Here, we can all agree, though perhaps not as to particulars. He also argues that the correlation of particular brain states with particular mental states (e.g. mystical experiences) ought not be taken to mean that the mind is merely a function of brain activity as opposed to the experience of a genuine transcendence. Sue Blackmore argues that certain kinds of mental states can be artificially induced, thus giving us a reason to believe that mystical mental states are in fact the result of unusual but natural neurological conditions. They then get down into the details, and have a really decent give and take, backing up their arguments with peer reviewed studies and personal experiences. They talk of subjective experiences, the nature of the self and the possible explanatory power thereof. Overall, it is an excellent discussion and one well worth hearing.

Stenger vs. Bartholomew on the radio (UK)

2010-07-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

Because this exchange was done in a radio show format, the two disputants don't get around to making their cases or debating one another for quite awhile. I find this mildly annoying especially when I cannot easily fast-forward, as when driving.

Bartholomew leads with the idea of a randomized controlled trial, provides a reasonably concise and accurate thereof, and points out that only a couple of the formal studies of intercessory prayer quite fit the bill. He then boldly states “It seems to me quite unjustified to suppose that God will be manipulated by our prayers. If He were, He wouldn’t be God in the sense that I understand him.” Bartholomew thus disregards the entire concept of intercessory prayer, without so much as a nod to the many Scriptural references assuring true believers that their prayers will be heard and answered. For example, in James 5 the author of the epistle makes it clear that sincerely offered (and thoroughly lubricated) prayers for healing will prove effective. Of course, if this was truly so, we should find a notable lack of Christians in hospital, but it turns out they are hospitalized just about as often as anyone else.

Stenger counters by pointing out that while Bartholomew hastily dismisses a negative result, he would have happily accepted a positive result. They go back and forth on this for a bit, and Stenger holds his own. Bartholomew goes on to say that he cannot think of anything that would count as clear scientific evidence of a deity, which seems to me to indicate that he’s trying to craft a god hypothesis which is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Such a markedly sloppy approach to truth should militate against taking him too seriously, however sonorous and distinguished he sounds on the radio.

They cover a few other topics for awhile, but the debate fails to really get off the ground because Bartholomew insists that god would never provide the sort of evidence that would readily convince scientifically-minded people. Naturally, he doesn’t say what the explanation should be for such thoroughgoing divine hiddenness, but instead seems to assume that god is a bit of a non-interventionist, despite various Scriptural claims strongly to the contrary. In short, it seems that Stenger takes the God of the Bible far more seriously than Bartholomew does.

Overall, I was disappointed to have two very fine scientific minds in the studio without getting the chance to hear them go over anything much resembling scientific evidence.

Conradi vs. Paget in Sydney, Austrailia

2010-05-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

This debate may not be the most substantive or best argued one on the internets, but it is certainly a worthy listen. At least three things set it apart from the others:

1) Not the same old voices making the same exact arguments you've heard so many times before.
2) Not the usual audience, but rather a rowdy group of Aussie sceptics who laugh out loud.
3) Not the usual debate framing of vague proposition vs. its negation, but rather a head-to-head between two very different worldviews

(Bonus: Aussie accents!)

Paget promotes universal fine-tuning and makes an argument from Christian Scripture, basically saying that the texts make more sense in terms of historiography rather than mythmaking. Conradi does a fairly good job of picking apart Paget's arguments, and makes the case for withholding assent to any of Paget's generally theistic or specifically Christian claims.

Around 27 minutes in, Conradi spins out a parody of the major points of Christian dogma which is both spot-on and hilarious. That bit alone was worth the price of admission. Towards the end, though, he overplays the parallels between Jesus and the other dying-and-rising gods of the contemporary mystery cults, without so much as referencing original sources. That part was a bit embarrassing. Overall, though, it was a good performance from both sides.

Rutherford vs. Hitchens on the radio (UK)

2010-05-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

Adam Rutherford and Peter Hitchens discussed various matter on the radio show Unbelievable on Premier Christian Radio.

They don't actually get into the God question right off, but instead discuss the respective values of Anglicanism and Secularism. This is a cordial but not particularly interesting discussion, especially for listeners outside of the UK.

About 18 minutes in, Peter Hitchens makes some remarkably broad claims on behalf of all of the world's Christians. For example:

Atheists constantly assume things about Christians . . . they think Christians think there can be no morality of any kind without God, which we don't think.

Really? Evidently, Peter Hitchens is unfamiliar with any number of Christian apologists (many of whom far more generally well known than himself) who say precisely such things. No matter how cultured your voice and how Oxford your intonation, you sound like an idiot when you say something this badly wrong.

There is so much diversity within Christianity that it is foolish to make blanket claims of any sort about what Christians do and believe, but in this particular case it is doubly so, because the argument that morality is contingent upon God is quite common in Christian apologetics (from Augustine to C.S. Lewis to Bill Craig) and indeed the whole of divine command theory rests upon the assumption that moral commands exist not as propositional truths about the world, but rather as imperatives handed down from another realm altogether. Rutherford sort of gets around to making this point, but not particularly well. A bit later, Hitchens implies that the source of moral authority for British society is (and should remain) rooted in Biblical doctrine, thus hinting at divine command theory himself.

They go on about abortion for awhile, and this segment proves wholly unenlightening, because the speakers pretty much talk past each other and Hitchens gets all sanctimonious and huffy. Also, this is the bit where the show runs afoul of Godwin's law. Annoying.

They then go on for a bit about the proper role of Christianity in public policy and in defining the British character. Here, Hitchens manages to sound more convincing than his opponent, even though they are both avoiding bringing up any sort of relevant evidence.

Overall, this debate generated more heat than light, as one might well expect for a radio talk show. Skip this one unless you've nothing else to do.

Unbeliever rating: 2.0 stars
Believer rating: 2.5 stars
Overall rating: 2.5 stars

Hitchens vs. Haldane at Oxford University

2010-05-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens debated John Haldane on the topic of "Secularism and Faith in the Public Square" at Oxford (link). The debate was originally supposed to address whether it would be better to choose a secularist or faith-based approach to public policy.

Staying closely on topic, Hitchens describes and acclaims the exceptional American experiment of strictly separating church and state, and goes on to make the case that the most secular nations are (not coincidentally) the most free and prosperous. Naturally, he also takes a bit of time to recite a few of the abuses to which the priestly classes are prone when they are provided political power.

Haldane, for his part, lays out a 'structural map' in the vaguest possible terms, and manages somehow to say very little of consequence a rather learned way. He separates procedural values from substantive values, and notes that we as a society must have a conception of the good, but we cannot get there because many disagree on significant ethical issues. He also claims that fundamental moral notions cannot be grounded in secular moral philosophy but may easily be grounded in the idea that humans are created in the image of a god, but fails to make any argument to show why one approach is superior to another.

On cross, Haldane goes from vague to incoherent, while Hitchens gets sharper and more cutting. At this point, one is tempted to look away from the spectacle of a clearly learned philosopher failing to stake out a position which might substantively separate him from his interlocutor. They both agree that theocracy is a terrible idea, and Haldane does not point out any specific ways in which he would like to see faith become more useful and pervasive in the public square. Nativity displays? Faith schools? Church tithes from tax dollars? For the love of your Papist God, Haldane, please make a stand somewhere and defend your side of the argument! Had he chosen to do so, they might have had an interesting back and forth.

Unbeliever rating: 4.5
Believer rating: 3.0
Overall rating: 3.5

Robert Price vs James White in Innisbrook, FL

2010-05-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

I had to actually purchase this one. If you don’t want to do so, e-mail me and I’ll have you over to watch it in my living room, free of charge.

Price leads off by noting a few common apologetic arguments and take a few pokes at them. Memorably, he questions whether the early disciples were really akin a first-century Snopes, assiduously tracking down and debunking any Jesus myths which went beyond their actual experiences. He also outlines some of the processes by which pious fictions are transformed into holy writ and giving examples from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

White leads off with an argument against the principle of analogy in favor of internal consistency rather than a Bayesian approach to the a priori likelihood of seemingly miraculous events. He then has a go at Price's view of the authorship and transmission of the Biblical texts. Basically, he is saying that extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence. White goes on to argue, in effect, that it is implausible and unlikely that NT authors would borrow from contemporary Greek religions, whereas it is not implausible and unlikely that actual miracles took place. He makes this argument by stealthily incorporating the principle of analogy as to the former phenomenon, while attacking the principle of analogy as to the latter. He makes a few other arguments, none of which are particularly original, and most of which are directed at tearing down Price's work rather than building an affirmative case for Biblical exceptionalism.

Overall, it was a fine debate. Both men presented some of the best available arguments for his side. I was not, however, such an amazing debate that it was worth spending actual money to watch on mp4 video. I'd advise watching the free Price and Ehrman debates online, which cover pretty much the same ground.

Law vs. Alexander on the radio (UK)

2010-05-01T23:45:00.000-07:00

Stephen Law is a philosopher and children's author who advocates for critical thinking. Denis (rhymes with “menace”) Alexander is a brilliant professional pseudo-scientist, working within prestigious centres of academia to merge the ideas of methodological naturalism with those of theological supernaturalism. In this episode of Unbelievable, they discuss whether science has made theology superfluous by now. Or rather, they were supposed to do so. In reality, they mostly talk about philosophy of religion rather than the ongoing border disputes between the realms of science and faith.

Alexander (http://www.testoffaith.com/) claims that Paul of Tarsus was a first century Popperian, who made falsifiable claims about the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and that Christianity is generally an evidence-based faith. He goes on to make a few allusions to the fine-tuning argument, but he won’t go so far as to call it a proof. He also argues, oddly enough, that perhaps only evolution via natural selection can possibly create minds having morally significant free will.

Law (http://www.stephenlaw.org/) runs his trademark Evil God Hypothesis argument, a twist upon classical theodicy which I always enjoy and admire. He also brings up a few philosophical problems with fine-tuning arguments and conceptual problems with the idea of od typically defined, “It's just conceptual gibberish as far as I can tell.”

As usual, the young host jumps in on the side of theism, making this one-on-one into a two-on-one, which is evidently how the producers of Premier Christian Radio prefer to wage intellectual battle. Next week, it will be three to one against Philip Pullman, so I suppose Stephen Law has it relatively easy by comparison.

Overall, this was a fun discussion, covering a vast range of religious philosophical issues, but alas the discussion never focused on any particular set of arguments for long enough to get past the initial stages of argument and counter-argument, and thereby dig down and expose the underlying premises upon which the interlocutors really disagree.

McCormick vs. DiSilvestro at Bridgeway Christian Church

2010-04-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

This is a debate between two personal friends and professional academics, and much like the Miller / George debate back in 2003 it has an unusually cordial feel to it. No cheap shots or personal jabs here, which is refreshing after listening to a few too many D'Souza debates.

Opening Statements
DiSilvestro leads with WLC's four facts supposedly established by NT sources (i.e. Paul and Mark):

1) Jesus was buried honorably in the Arimathean’s tomb
2) On the following Sunday this very same tomb was found empty
3) Eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Jesus after his death and burial
4) The original disciples believed that Jesus arose from the dead

He goes on to infer that the best explanation for these "facts" lifted from NT sources is the explanation given in the NT itself, that is, "Jesus is risen -- Halleujah!" It is somehow taken to be an excercise in logic that when one omits the resurrection from the gospels, one finds a resurrection shaped hole in the narrative. Essentially, DiSilvestro's argument is that the NT writers were documenting history rather than making myths. This strikes me as more than a bit question begging, especially since he fails to address the key problem which is how one can determine which bits of ancient writings are history and which are mythical. All told, however, he runs the so-called minimal facts argument fairly well.

McCormick leads with a general approach to determining historical veracity, with a timeline chart showing the relevant historical documents, the events they purport to depict, and the gradual process of NT canonization. He goes on to make a fairly straightforward point about signal degradation over time, using cell phone towers as an illustration, and then goes on to take a decent stab at the probability of any given miracle report being accurate. Finally, he makes a few arguments from higher Biblical scholarship as to the reliability of the gospel accounts, and then runs out of time.

Follow On Arguments
DiSilvestro runs a few typical defenses of the reliability of Christian Scripture, for example, he defends the process of canonization by discussing a few of the criteria used to select which books were included in the New Testament. He also waves away gospel inconsistencies as invariably minor and thus compatible with the discrepancies common to eyewitness accounts of the same event.

McCormick doesn’t rebut DiSilvestro but talks again of historical methodology. He does bring up a very trenchant and persuasive comparison between the testimonials of Salem witchcraft and the testimonials of Jesus’ resurrection - in both cases one might attempt to use historical resources to evaluate the truth of a supernatural claim. This particular line of debate will be pursued further at a later date.

Closing Arguments
Both debaters manage to close well and recap their arguments, though they also bring up some new points. McCormick closes on a excellent question, which was essentially whether the historical evidence is so strong as to suggest that an all-powerful deity could not have made it far more convincing.

Overall, this was a fine debate, with both sides summarizing the usual arguments. I'd love to see these guys do a few more debates.

See also:
Luke Muelhauser's review
John Loftus review

Ehrman vs. Brown in Columbus, OH

2010-04-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

Michael Brown and Bart Ehrman debated the problem of evil at the Ohio State University in April of 2010. The audio is available from Brian Auten as an mp3.

One of the best features of this debate is that it is narrowly focused on a particular topic, which prevents a certain degree of vagueness and Gish-galloping.

Brown basically makes the case that suffering is not a problem because any given instance of suffering is instrumental to some greater good, whether that would be human free will, personal repentance, or else some unknown and unknowable divine purpose. He also defends a traditional approach to Christian scripture (e.g. he takes the Book of Job as a single narrative contra the conclusions of textual analyses) and makes the case that human sin is really the ultimate problem on Earth, leading to privation, starvation, and natural disasters and epidemics as well. He makes about as strong a case as possible, given the material that he has to work from.

Ehrman leads with the idea that the Bible is not unified in its treatment of major theological issues, including the problem of evil. He starts with the view found in Amos (and the prophets generally) that collective suffering is the result of a collective failure to follow God's commands, and exposes the collegiate audience to a few choice verses which they probably never endured in their Sunday School lessons. He goes on the outline the view of suffering found in the Book of Job, which is essentially that suffering is a test of character, and that one should never question "acts of God" understood here in the sense the phrase is usually used in insurance policies. He also points out the view of the apocalyptic books that suffering is the direct result of evil spiritual forces acting in the world. He finally makes the point that God sometimes directly intervenes to prevent human suffering, according to the Biblical accounts.

On rebuttal, both speakers go at each other with an unusual degree of unaffected passion, which makes for interesting listening. At times, this part gets painfully personal.

Overall, both speakers to a fine job of making their respective cases, but do not expect an in-depth presentation or rebuttal of the various philsophical theodicies, such as Hick's soul-making theodicy or Plantinga's assertion that it may be logically impossible to actualize a world with moral good but without moral evil. Instead, the speakers focus on real-world problems and scriptural (rather than theological) answers to those problems.

Barr vs Behe at Wheaton College

2010-04-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

This debate between two Christian biologists is nothing worth writing home about. Behe makes the argument of the ~~creationists~~ cdesign proponentsists that if something is complex and functional and difficult to explain naturally that it is time to stop trying to find a natural explanation and start looking for a supernatural one. Barr, to his small credit, points out that this is a terrible idea and would have prevented all manner of scientific breakthroughs. No one, however, makes the case that methodological naturalism is a useful approach because metaphysical naturalism happens to be true, and thus the debate fails to get off the ground as a true clash of worldviews. Instead, what we have here is a debate between one Christian who argues that we should make the leap of faith to supernatural explanations as soon as we get stuck on something complex and functional, and another Christian (not even a biologist) who argues that we should make the leap of faith to supernatural explanations after doing a bit of science first. My advice is to take a pass on this giant mug of lukewarm weak tea.

Hitchens vs. D'Souza in South Bend, IN

2010-04-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

The motion for this one was "Religion is the Problem," which somehow seems to me a bit overbroad. Doesn't really matter, though, because the interlocutors weren't too concerned with staying on topic.

Main Arguments
As one might expect, Hitchens leads with the abuses of the Catholic Church, by way of rebutting remarks made in Rome comparing the publication of atheist books to the waging of a pogrom. He notes that pogroms are not usually lead by deaf and dumb children, a somewhat unsubtle reference to the worst sexual abuses ever covered up by a major world religion. I wonder how long it took Hitch to come up with the most offensive subject he could think to bring up at a bastion of Catholic learning. Hitch goes on to run his usual arguments about the primitive origins of religion and the seemingly haphazard and chaotic nature of the universe (e.g. galaxies colliding, stars collapsing, species going extinct, etc.) and calls into question the idea that everything is created for our benefit.

D'Souza notes upfront that Hitchens' arguments don't directly address the central topic of the debate, whether religion does more good than harm. This is true, and a bit disappointing, because Hitch spent a decent portion of God is Not Great making a detailed case about how religion causes harm to societies and individuals. He then goes on to attack evolutionary biology for not yet understanding how life arose on Earth, and runs his usual knob-twiddling universal fine-tuning argument. He also runs an argument that individual acts of altruism (towards non-kin) cannot possibly have evolved, thereby implicitly assuming that every human action is genetically determined and that altruism towards non-kin cannot possibly be adaptive, and throws in the moral lawgiver argument and an appeal to popular consensus (which sounds a bit like a nod to reformed epistemology) to boot. At this point, he is pretty much Gish-galloping, raising as many arguments as possible in just a few minutes.

Rebuttal (5-mins each)
Hitchens leads with the problem of falsifiability, and hammers on that topic for a bit. D'Souza retorts that the Hebrew theory of creation was indeed falsifiable, but later scientifically verified, and that the Hebrew prophecy of a reconstituted Jewish nation-state was also fulfilled.

Review
Overall, this was a fairly weak debate on both sides. Hitch rambles too much and D'Souza was too busy galloping to really make any detailed arguments worthy of explication and analysis. I'd skip this one and listen to other events featuring either or both of these speakers.

Unbeliever rating: 2.5 stars
Believer rating: 2.0 stars
Overall rating: 2.5 stars

Ehrman vs. Evans in Kansas City, MO

2010-04-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

In this debate (video, audio) Bart Ehrman and Craig Evans debated the question "Does the New Testament Misquote Jesus" using a somewhat unusual format by which the interlocutors on both sides are asked to reply to a series of seven distinct and focused questions:

Q1. Are the gospels reliable?
Q2. Do the gospels accurately preserve the teaching of Jesus?
Q3. Do the gospels accurately preserve the activities of Jesus?
Q4. Do the gospels contain eyewitness tradition?
Q5. Do archæologists and historians use the gospels as sources?
Q6. Have the gospels been accurately preserved down through the centuries?
Q7. Do manuscript variants of the gospels effect significant Christian doctrines?

Ehrman repeatedly encourages the audience to go back and reread the gospels, carefully and in parallel, comparing the passages describing a particular story (e.g. the empty tomb narrative) across all of the available sources. He also poses a number of interesting questions for personal study, such as: If Jesus went around openly claiming to be God incarnate (as in the gospel of John) then why did the authors of the synoptics miss this important theological detail, and why was he never stoned for blasphemy? Ehrman points our various other significant discrepancies in the gospel narratives, e.g. Jesus was silent throughout the passion narrative in gMark (up until the outburst on the cross) but he behaved very differently throughout the same events as depicted in gLuke and gJohn.

Evans, for his part, essentially maintains that the gospels are essentially accurate histories, citing various Christian biblical scholars for support. He also makes a couple interesting arguments from the internal evidence of the gospels relative to the live issues in the church around the close of the first century.

I would have preferred a bit more direct cross-examination between the speakers, but the question by question format has its virtues, for example, it was refeshing that the speakers stayed closely on topic. This was overall a scholarly and polite debate, and both men fairly effectively made the strongest points available to their side. I heartily commend this one for your viewing/listening pleasure.

Livesey vs. Morgan & Pitner on the radio (UK)

2010-03-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

In this episode of Unbelievable Gordon Livesey holds up the godless end of the discussion fairly well, but he is the only skeptic in the room for a program in which three theists talk about how their hearts (and one man's lungs) have been personally touched by Jesus. It is for the most part an exercise in personal subjectivity with little concern for objectively verifiable facts, and as much as Livesey tries to get the host and guests to engage in critical thinking, they are staunchly resistant to the idea.

Funny moment: About 38 minutes into the show the CEO guy from America runs a version of ICP's "f***ing magnets, how do they work?" appeal to one of the four fundamental forces, and goes on to 'anchor' his beliefs in the Genesis cosmogony. Ungh.,

My advice: Skip this one. There quite a few debates which feature arguments done well on both sides, and this is by no means one of them.

Hitchens vs. Wolpe in Boston, MA

2010-03-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltL-PAGV_-M

Rabbi David Wolpe debated ~~Chris Hedges~~ Christopher Hitchens on general questions of god and faith. This debate suffers from a notable lack of focus on any particular issue. Both men are in a polemical mode, trading one-liners which occasional flashes of insight. The rabbi does a surprisingly good job at wittily parrying Hitch's attacks, but ultimately they do not engage in actual dialog nor to they address any particular argument in any depth. To sum up in a single cliche, this debate generated more heat than light.

Sizer-Watt vs. Grinbank in Ontario

2010-03-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

This was a somewhat formal debate (and informal beard-off) between two young Canadian men, both familiar with the basics of philosophy and theology, but not experienced in the art of public communication.

Michael Sizer-Watt debated Mariano Grinbank not on whether any gods really exist, but on whether one can make more sense of morality by grounding it in the assumptions of either naturalism or theism. They both have a go at the question, but ultimately they both miss the mark because neither addresses the key question "Why be moral" within the framework of his own worldview. Had they done so, they might have realized that they are both talking about acting in the interest of fulfilling one's own values, but operating on very different assumptions about the nature of reality under which one might go about doing so.

Sizer-Watt starts off with a concession that it is harder to establish what is right and wrong in a naturalist paradigm than it is to simply say "Morality is doing what X says" where X is a deity or a set of deities to whom we defer. He wants to argue for an alternative theory of ethics. He then goes on to describe the results of contemporary research at the boundaries of ethics and neuroscience. This is truly fascinating stuff, but it doesn't really prove anything about the nature of morality withoout throwing in several unspoken premises, such as "If morality has characteristics X, Y, Z, then it is

Grinbank, for his part, defines morality in terms of obedience to God and goes on to argue that it can only exist if God is there to obey. Not very convincing to the truly fence-sitting agnostic.

My advice is to skip this one, unless you really dig old man beards on young men.

Shermer & Harris vs Chopra & Houston at Caltech (ABC News)

2010-03-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaceOff/nightline-face-off-god-future/story?id=10170505

I've got to say right off that televised debates just up and wig me out. I'm not sure what it is about television which makes televised debates feel so different from ordinary debates. Maybe it's the animated watermark in the lower right corner. Possibly it is the thought of millions of pairs of eyes and ears. In any event, this debate consisted of a panel of four people, apparently chosen based on a combination of controversial ideas and sex appeal. Every panelist is given a brief period to make an opening statement.

Michael Shermer’s opening makes the case that religion is a cultural construct, as is obvious from the geographical and temporal distribution of religious ideas. He also makes an argument from the efficacy of methodological naturalism, and points out the cross-cultural tendency of human beings to over-detect agency-based explanation.

Deepak Chopra leads with a nod in the direction of science followed by a barrage of rather fuzzily-defined terms, such as “infinite consciousness” and “agent of downward causation.” He also alludes to the apparent fine-tuning of the universe to allow for the evolution of life.
Sam Harris makes it clear upfront that he wants to talk about religion as it is usually practiced rather than the god of the philosophers, who is “so denuded of doctrine as to more or less be synonymous with pure mystery or pure information or pure energy or pure anything.” He also makes it clear that the god of the people is the one that matters in politics and policy.

Jean Houston provides a story from an old Australian aborigine woman, and another even more amusing story from an old white American woman. She also makes it clear that she reads Dante without the benefit of translation, for some reason.

After their openings, the panelists start going back and forth. Predictably enough, Chopra spews a barrage of woo-woo talk and Shermer calls him on it. Eventually, Deepak drops this gem of pseudo-profundity, “In the absence of a conscious entity, the Moon remains a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup.” The crowd audibly boos. This is the both low point and somehow the highlight of the event. Damnable televised debates.

There is a constant tension throughout this debate between the skeptic panelists and the New Age panelists over whether they should be talking about religion as it is traditionally (and most widely) practiced, or religion as it is being re-conceptualized by authors like Chopra and Houston. On this point, at least, the woo-wooers have the title of the event on their side. On the other hand, the skeptics have the fierce urgency of the now on theirs.

Throughout the event, I found myself wondering if Deepak Chopra understands and believes what he says. I also found myself wondering if Jean Houston was going to at any point say something insightful and on topic, rather than merely telling stories and dropping names. Most often, I found myself wishing that the folks at Nightline Faceoff had found Harris and Shermer a more worthy opponent or two, but then again, this is television and I ought not expect ratings-driven producers to give two shits about philosophical rigor.

Overall rating: 3.5

Believer rating: 2.5

Unbeliever rating: 4.5

Loftus vs. Wood in Chesapeake, VA

2010-03-13T23:45:00.000-08:00

Wood leads with a masterful synthesis of Christian apologetics, claiming that in order to have a debate about God, one must have the following:

A universe to debate in (cosmological argument to a personal atemporal first cause)
Laws to allow for life to exist (fine-tuning argument)
Complex biology (argument to intelligent designer)
Human consciousness (existence of immaterial minds goes against naturalism)
Reliable cognitive faculties (Plantinga's EAAN)
The laws of logic (transcendantal argument)

Somehow, he wraps all these arguments together in a single 20-minute opening statement. Truly superb! Definitely this opening is worth hearing and carefully analysing.

Loftus, by contrast, muddles together a mish-mash of arguments, few of which are formally valid and most of which would succumb to an accusation of circumstantial ad hominem. Here are a few of his arguments:

Christians hold non-Christian religious scripture and ideas to a much higher standard of evidence than their own religious ideas (Outsider test for faith)
Christian accept science except when it conflicts with dogma
Christians value faith over reason, failing to weigh evidence properly
Christians accept historical evidence which is very poor without taking into account the aprior improability of the events depicted therein
Christians accept the difficulties of interpreting Scripture without questioning whether an all-powerful Deity could have been clearer on key points
Christians hold themselves and other humans to higher moral standards than those found in the Bible

Overall, his presentation was weak, his arguments difficult to follow, and he provides not a single argument for the truth of naturalism, but rather he gives reasons to question Christian theism. I do not consider this approach effective.

Overall rating: 3.5
Believer rating: 5.0
Unbeliever rating: 2.0

Barker vs Pell in Sydney, Austrailia

2010-03-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

Former preacher Dan Barker debated Cardinal George Pell on 11 March 2010, at Macquarie University. The full video was made available on the university website.

Pell leads with the argument that maths, physics, biology, goodness, truth, and pretty much everything can only be explained in terms of a transcendent mind, inaccessible to empirical study. He does not at any point formalize his argument or attempt to show how an invisible, immaterial, atemporal, non-spatial, all-powerful mind might possibly exist, much less how it is necessary to explain everything that does. Pell manages to sound authoritative and priestly even while failing to make any weighty theological arguments, except for a poorly stated version of universal fine-tuning. He throws around probabilies without trying to explain how they were (badly) computed. In short, the guy rambles. At one point, he says something so ridiculous about evolution that a young woman in the audience bursts out giggling for just a moment before controlling herself. If ever I got to choose which theist to debate, I'd probably choose George Pell.

Barker, by contrast, makes a fairly clear case and manages to pick apart those of his opponent. He leads with a few opening arguments:

1) Evidence of mystery is not evidence for God

2) The purported properties of God are logically incompatible

3) Terms like "spiritual" and "supernatural" are ill-defined and possibly incoherent

4) Theodicy has failed, along with other efforts to meet atheological arguments

5) Religion offers scant moral guidance on the serious ethical questions of the day

6) An externally-imposed purpose of life offers slavery, rather than meaningfulness

Overall, Pell's rebuttal to Barker offers one misconstrual after another of the relevant arguments, while Barker's rebuttals to Pell are mostly spot on.

Honestly, this is one of the more one-sided debates I've seen in which the unbeliever vastly outperforms his opponent. Personally, I have some trouble enjoying one-sided contests, unless the losers are from Texas. Overall, though, this was a reasonably good debate.

Unbeliever rating: 4.5

Believer rating: 2.5

Overall rating: 3.5

Copson vs. Robertson on the radio

2010-02-27T22:22:00.000-08:00

Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association discusses various contemporary issues with Scottish minister and apologist David Robertson on this episode of Unbelievable on Premier Christian Radio.

Probably this discussion is primarily of interest to British listeners, since some of the issues discussed herein are not necessarily generalizable to the anglophone world at large. However, it is interesting to hear how another culture and government deals with the problem of striking a balance between faith-based ideas and shared secular values. Except for the hideous intro music, it is not a bad listen overall.

Corbett vs. McDowell at Saddleback College

2010-02-26T22:22:00.000-08:00

This debate quickly degenerated into a one-sided debacle, in which the young aspiring apologist aggressively argues to the point, while the elderly tenured professor lackadaisically lectures on various topics more-or-less unrelated to the question under discussion, which was how morality might be grounded on either theism or atheism.

McDowell opens with three assertions which he takes as given:

1) Moral values must transcend human preferences, constituting a "law above the law"

2) Indeterministic free will (IFW) really exists and morality cannot exist without it

3) Humans are inherently valuable rather than merely cosmically insignificant

Essentially, McDowell is appealing to three intuitions about reality which are widely held (largely without much reflection) and thus he puts the skeptic in the position of arguing against propositions which most will find intuitively appealing. A perfectly practical apologetical approach, I dare say. Since Professor Corbett didn't so much as attempt to refute these assertions, I will have a go at it here.

1) To the contrary, moral values must be grounded in actual human desires in order to be at all relevant to humans. By way of example, suppose we are all simulated minds living in a simulated world created by a sadistic but superintelligent graduate student in a computer lab. Would his (undoubtedly transcendent) preference for human suffering provide us with a good reason to make each other suffer? Or would we choose to defy our creator and cling to our own values?

2) No evidence has been presented for the reality of IFW, either by McDowell or anyone else. It has neither been tested nor proven, merely asserted. Our intuition to the contrary has little value, since we are generally mistaken to assume that folk psychology can tell us anything about the way our brains actually work. To the contrary, every neurological finding to date has supported the assertion that human brains function as electrochemical machines subject to the very same laws of nature as everything else in the world.

3) To say that humans do indeed value other humans, especially those physically and genetically close to them, is uncontroversial. McDowell is not so easily satisfied, and insists that humans must be valued on a cosmic scale or else it doesn't count. Again, he offers no evidence in support of his assertion, but merely counts on the audience to make the intuitive leap. After all, who doesn't want to be inherently valuable in the cosmic scheme of things? Or, to put it another way, "Atheism is the arrogant view that billions upon of billions of galaxies were not created with us in mind."

Despite having lead with three intuitively appealing but evidentially unsupportable assertions, Corbett does little to refute his opponents case and, what is worse, does almost nothing to build a positive case for purely humanistic ethics.

Tenured profs, once again, I implore you in the name of all that is good and true, stop dabbling in debates on topics for which you have no formal training or academic preparation. It's just embarrassing. Go back to your classrooms and captive audiences.

Overall rating: 3.0
Believer rating: 4.5
Unbeliever rating: 1.5

p.s. For further critque of this debate and ideas about how atheists can improve their performance, please read Luke's thoughts on these matters.

Shermer vs. Robertson on the radio (UK)

2010-02-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

Oh joy! Another debate on whether secularism is the root of all social ills. If you want to read an upbeat review of this debate, please do click here. My assessment will not be nearly so flattering to either opponent as that one.

It would seem that Pastor David Robertson is not merely a Christian and a Scotsman, but a well and True Scotsman and an authentic True Christian (TM) to boot. He also seems more than happy to toss off the spurious claim that some people just don't fit the bill, and he'll give True Christians full credit for any and all instances of moral progress in Western culture, while disclaiming the role that devout Christians played in maintaining the subjugation of slaves, women, witches, apostates, and so on. Evidently, Christianity gets the credit for everything good, while the nasty secularists get credit for everything else. Such a transparently biased rewriting of history should not go unchallenged, but it would seem that skeptical champion Michael Shermer was having an off day.

Shermer weakly contests Robertson's skewing of history, fact, and logic. He never once calls him out on the True Scotsman fallacy, nor does he do a fine job of unpacking the negative correlation between religious faith and positive social outcomes even though the only significant peer-reviewed cross-national study was favorably reported in his own magazine. Even a cursory review of the data reveals this correlation between lesser social outcomes and higher levels of faith, so one really has to wonder why Shermer fails to hammer this point home. He alludes to it only once and then fails to stem the massive tide of bullshit that Robertson brings on regarding the indisputable facts on the ground in most secular nations in Europe.

Moreover, Shermer stays relentlessly on the defensive, painstakingly explaining his own position (which he does fairly well) but never pointing out the glaring holes in his Robertson's worldview. Next time, he should ask Robertson a few pointed questions of his own. I'd be happy to suggest a few. Here's one: Has any study ever found a positive correlation between religious faith and moral behavior, at any level of social organization, among similarly situated nations or societies?

Pinker vs Hurlbut at MIT

2010-02-19T23:45:00.000-08:00

Minding our Morals: Freedom and the Brain from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.

(Feb 19, 2010)

Dr. Pinker starts out with characteristic lucitidy, laying his "ontological cards" on the table, as he says. He makes the case that the complexity of the brain itself explains the complexity of psychology and gives rise to subjective experience. He goes on to clearly outline the compatibilist position that free will and physical determinism coexist perfectly well, in the most sensible sense of those phrases. He then describes the nature of moral responsibility, by which he means holding other people accountable for their actions via deterrent means ranging from disapproval to incarceration or worse. He goes on to briefly outline the sociobiological origins and utility of naturalistic human morality.

Dr. Hurlbut doesn't think that science alone is an adaquate way of discussing morality, and eventually gets around to the usual notions of transcendent truth, mysterious moral awareness thereof, indeterminist free will, inherent meaning in nature, and other such ancient superstitions. He does not attempt to demonstrate that these conceptual categories have real world referents, but instead appeals to the intuitions of the audience. For once, this might be a bad idea, given the critical and analytical proclivities of MIT students. He rambles around for quite awhile, but it seems that his overarching argument was that humans are mysterious and wonderful beings, and we really ought not attempt to empircally test and deconstruct their essential characteristics such as love and empathy and morality. Or something touchy feeling like that. He closes with something like an altar call.

Their back and forth coffee chat (with audience Q&A) wends itself around various topics, and is notable in at least two respects. Pinker manages to demonstrate how to unfailingly polite even as he vigorously questions his interlocutors deeply held beliefs, and Hurlbut shows us that even reputable M.D.'s occasionally fall back on faith-healing, at least where mental health is concenred. Ok, that is just a bit unfair, but you can the idea.

Overall rating: 3.5
Believer rating: 2.5
Uneliever rating: 4.5

Carrier vs. Licona in Topeka, KS

2010-02-11T11:46:00.000-08:00

Mike Licona leads with a moving anecdote or two which I'll not repeat here. He then lays out a series of criteria for historical analysis. Eventually, he gets into his main historical argument, which he explicitly bases on the Pauline corpus rather than the gospels. He starts building up a minimal facts argument based on the scholarly consensus as to the crucifixion around 30CE and Paul's subsequent conversion to Christianity a couple years later. Unsurprisingly, he moves on to the various claims put forth in 1 Cor 15, which Paul seems to have received from earlier Christians. He then attempts to preempt Carrier by making an argument that the standard historical criteria make the resurrection hypothesis the best explanation of Paul's conversion and the claims that Paul reported to have received from the early church. [Editorial note: Another equally useful explanation would be that the early church sincerely believed that which it passed on to Paul, but that there were no actual eyewitnesses behind the creed, only oral traditions which grew up in precisely the same way that glurge e-mails do.]

Rick Carrier starts off with an effective illustration to help people come to see the difference between claims which require ordinary evidence "I own a car" and claims which require far more evidence "I own a nuclear missile" and claims which require the best possible evidence "I own an interstellar spacecraft." He goes on to address miracle stories in general, such as those surrounding St. Genevieve, and the reports of magical events at the Temple of Delphi and the sacred olive tree of Athens. He goes on to make a parallel between the gospels and earlier legends, such as the stories of Romulus and Osiris. He then makes the difficult argument (given the audience) that the early disciples were schizotypal visionaries, prone to subjective religions experiences unbeknownst to those of us who are psychologically healthy and normal. Specifically, he argues that Paul was preaching a gospel based on his own personal religious visions combined with his interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. He goes on to argue that Paul hallucinated precisely what he needed in order to quickly resolve his internal emotional conflict, assuming that he was riddled with guilt over his persecution of the early Christian Church.

Instead of rebuttal, this debate goes straight into cross-examination. They each ask difficult questions of the other and work hard to bolster their own case while tearing down their opponent's case. I love this format and wish that more debates would adopt something like it.

Overall, this was a tremendous debate in which both men do a fine job of making honest arguments from the best evidence available.

Loftus vs. D’Souza at Urbana-Champaign

2010-02-09T22:22:00.000-08:00

Opening Statements
Loftus leads with an allusion to Dumb and Dumber which makes no impression on the crowd. He then runs the argument from religious diversity, which essentially concludes that religion must be a socially constructed phenomenon, not unlike like language or cuisine, because it is distributed and perpetuated by culture. Loftus goes on to critique many of the arguments in D’Souza’s book as essentially Deistic rather than peculiarly Christian. He then illustrates the alternately barbaric and mythical nature of Christian Scriptures by citing briefly to a few choice passages and then touches briefly on historical methodology and miracles. He goes on to briefly state an evidential argument from evil, along with a preemption of the free-will defense.

D’Souza starts off by saying the Loftus covered too much ground in his opening and claims that Loftus ought to have been providing a positive argument for naturalism rather than a series of arguments against Christian theism. He then states that science cannot tell us where we came from, why we are here, or where we are going. Of course, science does have an answer for these questions, but the church audience would not likely find those answers particularly edifying. He then runs his usual cosmological argument from the similarity of the Big Bang and Genesis 1, and a teleological argument from cosmic fine-tuning. He then preaches a sort of meta-Christian gospel of salvation through divine intervention, and very briefly makes a case for the historical Jesus.

Rebuttal
Loftus giggles too much, but he does eventually get around to rebutting some of D'Souza's arguments. No doubt he could have made better use of his limited time. D'Souza, by contrast, hits Loftus hard and head on, and closes smoothly. He also comes off as a bit of an ass.

Cross-Ex
This is usually my favorite part of any debate and this one is no exception. It proves lively, reasonably well-informed, not heavily moderated, and covers ground not hitherto covered.

Closing Statements
Loftus muffs his closing, which is to be expected. He really should write his thoughts down beforehand. D'Souza does his smoothly and even manages to work in a rebuttal to the Outsider Test.

All told, this was an acceptable debate, but I've heard both sides argued better. D'Souza comes off as jaunty and arrogant while Loftus sounds well-informed but ill-prepared.

Overall rating: 3.5
Believer rating: 4.0
Unbeliever rating: 3.o

Thomas Dixon and Steve Fuller on the radio (UK)

2010-02-06T23:45:00.000-08:00

In this episode of Unbelievable, Dixon and Fuller rap about the relationship between epistemology, science, and theology. Unusually, neither guest on this Christian radio show self-identifies as a Christian.

Steve Fuller alludes to something akin to the transcendental argument for deism and then takes an even more unusual tack and argues that evolutionary accounts of human reason cannot explain the creativity of mathematicians and physicists such as Isaac Newton. Thomas Dixon counters that evolution can readily account for all forms of intelligence on Earth. They go on to discuss the relationship between science, metaphysics, and theology, and the early origins of something akin to Gould's non-overlapping magisteria. It was an enjoyable and rambling discussion, but not quite a debate.

Although they cross over nearby conceptual ground, the disputants here fail to really address the question of what we'd expect human rationality to be like on the naturalistic hypothesis as opposed to the hypothesis of theistic design. On the naturalistic hypothesis, we’d expect that humans to readily comprehend human social relations, language and grammar, and intricacies of the dating and mating game, while having a much harder time understanding phenomena which have little to no direct impact on evolutionary fitness, such as cosmological origins, quantum physical models, or apophatic theology. Moreover, we’d expect humans to devote a massive amount of brainpower and resources to the problem of getting laid, since natural selection strongly favors that, at least to a point. Of course, the natural prudishness of Christian radio prevents such a frank discussion of why the human mind turned out the way that it did, but I digress.

They also talk about intelligent design for a bit, whether it could possibly be considered scientific and whether it should be taught in schools. This part covers some very well-trampled ground and wasn't terribly enlightening. Almost dozed off and wrecked my tiny Toyota. Nonetheless, it was a decent summary of the state of the problem when it comes to the relationship between public policy and scientific knowledge.

Peter Atkins vs Stephen Meyer on the radio (UK)

2010-01-16T23:45:00.000-08:00

This wasn't so much a debate between Atkins and Meyer, as an hour-long promo for a certain propoganda film with occassional bouts of scientific talk from the token skeptic, who is placed in conversation with no less than three dedicated creationists, one of whom is the host and producer of the show. If ever I pull such a one-sided stunt on my show feel free to hang me in effigy and label me as a hypocrite and a fool. In any event, this episode was more-or-less much worth my time, because it provided a reasonably concise and accurate summary of the positions articulated by both naturalists and intelligent design creationists.

Prothero & Shermer vs Meyer & Sternberg in Beverly Hills

2009-11-30T10:50:00.000-08:00

Shemer argues that we should reframe the ID/evolution debate from a scientific debate to a skirmish in the culture wars. He does a fairly good job of backing this up, but he is also careful not to commit the genetic fallacy and thereby conclude that his opponents arguments must be faulty because they have an vested ideological interest in fitting the data into a certain model. He also provides a couple of affirmative arguments for evolutionary theory.

Prothero characterizes the central argument from ID something like this:

There are only two explanations for functional complexity: Evolution or intelligent design
We found something functionally complex and we cannot imagine how it evolved naturally
Therefore, it didn't evolve naturally (via argument from personal incredulity)
Therefore, it must have been intelligently designed

He also does a fair bit of prebuttal, briefly addressing some of the common arguments for ID and alludes to arguments for evolutionarily driven abiogenesis.

Meyer starts off by attempting to reframe the debate, he desires not to discuss intelligent design theory, but only to address the question of whether neo-Darwinian theory (including natural selection acting on mutation-induced variations) adequately accounts for the observed pace of evolutionary change. He argues that the trilobite eyes, for example, arose too quickly (a few million years) to be explained by selection acting upon variation.

Sternberg expands on the argument from not enough millions of years, going on at some length about the number of morphological changes necessary to convert land mammals into cetaceans. He then asks “Was there enough mutational grist for the mill of natural selection?” He then does a few maths, waves his hands, and concludes that the answer must be in the negative. All in all this was a very solid presentation, but we cannot evaluate it without seeing the formulae themselves and (damn it) I only have an audio copy of the debate. Perhaps Sternberg published his results somewhere?

Meyer retakes stage and does the maths-heavy hand-waving about functional proteins, apparently assuming that proteins are created from scratch molecule-by-molecule via a uniform random process. It is hard to tell though, since he doesn’t show his work. My maths profs would have flunked him on this part. He does manage to sound smart, though, using hardcore jargon such as “combinatorial sequence space.” Maybe he is hoping to impress the nerdy girls.

Oddly enough, between Meyer and Sternberg I did not hear any arguments about the debate topic, that is, the “adequacy of Neo-Darwinian natural selection and mutation to explain the origin of life.” Perhaps they thought it was supposed to be about the biological origins of aquatic mammals in particular, though it is unclear how they could have made such a mistake.

The rebuttal periods get a bit haphazard, and here I'd like to pseudo-randomly quote from Margaret Atwood, “The chaos smells very bad.” Somewhat surprisingly (to me) the ID guys manage to hold their ground here, but only by first conceding a massive amount of ground to the evolutionists (ancient earth, speciation via by natural selection acting upon mutational variation, etc.) and staunchly defending the notion that one can squeeze God into the very tiny conceptual gap between plenty of mutations not nearly enough mutations. I mean, really, if that is all God has to do was toss in a lucky mutation every so often, why not give Him just a bit less credit? That is so weak tea, it makes Episcopalianism look like an uncompromising theological juggernaut by comparison.

Overall, though, I'd recommend this debate because it is one of the few in which I've heard ~~cdesign proponentists~~ intelligent design advocates giving nuanced arguments which clearly stake out a position between ordinary creationism and scientific theories.

Dawkins & Grayling vs. Harries & Moore on whether Atheism is the new Fundamentalism

2009-11-29T23:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/atheism

Talk about an all-star cast. This debate featured Richard Dawkins, A.C. Grayling, Richard Harries, and Charles Moore. Ok, so it's a 3/4 star cast, but still, that's a good panel.

Harries starts off for some reason by praising a certain flavor of atheism, one which in all my years of atheist activism I've yet to encounter in an actual living person, namely, the sort of nihilistic amoral atheism featured in works of fiction such as The Brothers Karamazov. Presumably, he does this so as to get the audience to think of unbelief as necessarily nihilistic and amoral. It is particularly ironic, then, when just a few moments later he criticizes atheists for "picking on the weakest points" of their opponents arguments. He closes by saying that the new atheism is too focused on an activist and interventionist god, unlike the god of the Anglicans who presumably hangs back and allows Engilshmen to run roughshod over indigeouns peoples in all corners of the globe. Okay, I'm paraphrasing just a bit on that last point.

Grayling leads off by noting that the new atheism came about in reaction to the rise of militant theism, both in terms of physical terrorist attacks and vituperative verbal attacks. He goes on to note that "atheist," like "afaeryist" or "apixieist" seems to load the dice by negating a particular view. He then makes an affirmative argument for secularism, which is essentially the view that religious groups should be given the same priviledges as other volutary organizations, no more or less. He closes with the absurdity of fundamentalist non-stamp-collecting, or fundamentalist non-doing-anything.

Moore leads off with a few harsh (dis)analogies, and goes on to draw a comparison between Iran's fundamentalism and that of Soviet Russia. I think this is an apt comparison, given the emphasis on conformity and thoughtcrime under both regimes, but it seems odd to compare either regime to the secular humanists there on the stage, all of whom line up firmly behind liberal democratic ideals such as religious tolerance and personal liberty.

Dawkins leads by doing what no one else has taken the opportunity to do yet in this debate: defining the terms of debate. Very good move, if you ask me. He characterizes fundamentalism in terms of two criteria: Authoritative scriptures and extremist actions. On both points, he points out the "new atheism" (for which he is a prominent spokesman) is clearly sorely lacking. The rest of his speech is similarly to the point and devastating.

While the IQ2 debates are typically lacking in rebuttals and cross-ex, they have one very useful feature, that is, polling the audience before and after. After the effective speeches of Grayling and Dawkins, I was not at all surprised to find that the audience was moved against the motion "Atheism is the new Fundamentalism" and presumably towards a more tolerant view of unbelief.

Ehrman vs. D’Souza at UNC

2009-11-20T06:16:00.000-08:00

I purchased this debate so that you will never have to do so. Seriously, don't bother, there are far better debates available entirely for free online, many of which include video.

Ehman does a fine job of unpacking the problem of suffering, just as he has done in plenty of other debates. D'Souza, to his credit, dose a fine job of muddling the issues by bringing in a few facially plausible analogies to childrearing and parenting, along with the bizarre idea that a decent respect for human free will obliges one to stand back and allow rapists and murderers to act as they will. He makes it sound better than that, of course.

The rebuttal period was lamentably short, such that no one really digs into the problems of whether the free-will defense is soundly grounded upon facts about the world, although Ehrman runs a clever rebuttal based on the putative nature of the Christian afterlife. Moreover, the soul-building theodicy is put forth but never really examined. There just wasn't enough time to do so.

Overall, both speakers do a decent job, given severe time constraints, but they never really get beyond the first level arguments and hinting at a few possible theodicies. Best take a pass on this one and find another one of Ehrman's several debates on this topic.

Barker vs. D'Souza in Plano, TX

2009-11-19T23:45:00.000-08:00

Both debaters give pretty standard arguments here, fine-tuning and first-cause from D'Souza, and prebuttal attempts at scientific and philosophical rigor from Barker. For example, if we have a gap in scientific knowledge, it is okay to fill that gap with the God of Abraham? They also dwell a bit on the historical problem of how to evaluate and accept the Jesus narratives. The back-and-forth between the two speakers after the rebuttals was particularly muddled, because Dan less articulate but more up-to-date on the science, while Dinesh articulately expresses outdated cosmological ideas.

It's a good introduction to these ideas, but I've seen both men do better than this on other occasions. This one is not particularly worth watching, unless you've never seen these guys in action before.

Dennett, Harris, Hitchens vs. Boteach, D'Souza, Taleb

2009-11-14T06:16:00.000-08:00

I don't usually outsource my reviews to other (better) bloggers than myself, but I'll make an exception in this case and direct you to PZ's review of this debate. I have very little to add to that review, except to contest the idea that Hitchens successfully "[r]efutes the fine-tuning argument" and to say that I found Robert Wright's perspective refreshingly novel rather than muddled. I'd argue (presumably contrary to PZ) that we need more agnosticism and deism in God debates.

Ayala vs. Craig at Indiana University

2009-11-05T23:45:00.000-08:00

Luckily enough, I spent a memorable fraction of my early childhood in my Puerto Rican grandparent’s home, which means that I’m somewhat used to hearing English spoken with a strong Spanish accent. That said, I’m guessing that many people will find Dr. Ayala hard to follow on account of his accent, and that despite the relatively high quality of the audio recording.

Ayala leads off by drawing a distinction between designed artifacts and non-designed objects. He notes that organisms were left out of the original scientific revolution (which posited that the rules of nature are universal) because of the kind of thinking put forth by Paley and other intelligent design theorists. Ayala claims that Darwin’s great advance was to show how purposeful complexity may arise naturally, thus bringing life finally within the penumbra of a scientific revolution which had begun much earlier. He goes on to adduce several common evidences of evolution by natural selection operating over geological time. Ayala believes (as I do) that the most convincing evidence for common descent is that we find from a branch of sciences unavailable to Darwin’s contemporaries, that is, the evidence of molecular biology.

Craig leads off by defining intelligent design as a set of theories for inferring design from evidence. He briefly alludes to Bill Dembski’s argument from highly improbable complex patterns, and argues that the inference to design is justified on those grounds alone. Craig does not contest common descent (for which Ayala had argued) focuses his efforts entirely on the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection. He makes an interesting argument that studies of the HIV genotype over a couple decades can give us any idea of what mutation is capable of producing over a time span very many orders of magnitude longer. He also argues that evolutionists must show definitively that mutation plus natural selection is powerful enough to get everything done in only a few billion years.

Ayala, on rebuttal, seems at first to ignore Craig’s opening statement, but he is actually trying to give an example of the power of mutation and selection in practice. He refers to a test tube experiment in which low-probability mutations can be made to take over an entire tube merely by changing the environment in which the bacteria breed. He then goes on to reiterate some of the evidence for common descent.

Craig picks apart Ayala’s opening statement and rebuttal, quote-mining from various fringe scientists to show that mutation plus selection doesn’t drive the creation of new biological mechanisms in under a hundred years or two. Funnily enough, Craig accuses his opponent of undue extrapolation, even as he stretches timelines from 10^2 to 10^9 in attempt to show that Darwinian mechanisms just cannot get the job done in the time available. Craig seems to conclude that while the universe is impressively fine-tuned for intelligent life, it is not fine-tuned enough to expect intelligent life to arise more than once.

Overall impressions
This debate demonstrates amply that expertise in public debating and debate prep can overcome expertise in the topic under debate. Ayala clearly knows more about the subject matter, but he seems overwhelmed by Craig's relentless focus on the problem of how often mutations arise within a given population. I'd be interested in hearing a debate focused on that paritcular issue, but to my knowledge that's never been done.

Barker vs. Deen at King's College London

2009-10-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

Adam Deen eloquently argues that if people are merely made of matter, then human moral concepts and moral feelings are utterly worthless, because there is no one up in the sky to obey and obedience to authority is self-eivdently the only sort of morality worth having. He stretches this single point out for quite a while, delving into various ideas such as moral subjectivism, accountability, personal taste, and metaphysical determinism. He appeals to several common intuitions for which he provides no evidence whatsoever, such as the idea of libertarian free will. When it all comes down to it, he is essentially yearning aloud to be liberated from the onerous task of moral reasoning by finding Someone to whom to fully submit himself. Incidentally, Mr. Deen is a Muslim, which means "one who submits."

Barker argues that moral feelings are inherent to most people and that we should work to help people not because we value obedience but because we value people themselves.

Overall, it was a satisfactory debate, but I would have greatly appreciated any attempts to drills down into the various motivations for moral action and what they imply for the competing theories of morality.

Lewis vs. Tzortzis on cosmology and fine-tuning

2009-10-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

Tzortzis starts off with a slight variation on the Kalam cosmological argument, arguing to a timeless, immaterial and personal cause (just as WLC does). He then goes on the the argument from a cosmos finely-tuned for life, and provides a reasonably good presentation thereof. As is usual in such arguments, he rules out chance fine-tuning on the implicit assumption that our universe is the only one.

Lewis takes several minutes of dithering (he is a philosopher after all) before really getting into this arguments, which are essentially rebuttals rather than affirmative arguments for either atheism or agnosticism. With respect to the cosmological argument, he tries to show that the idea of a first cause is incoherent in a closed bubble of finite space-time. Respecting the second argument, he tries to show that basically 'luck happens' to at some places and time, especially given the possibility of an incomprehensibly vast multiverse. He also points out that certain solutions to the problem of evil lead to profound agnosticism regarding the nature of the divine.

Okay, now I just have to say this. Tzortzis boldly and confidently puts forth fundamentally fallacious arguments rooted in premises which are highly intuitively appealing but evidentially bankrupt. Lewis, by contrast, timidly and hesitantly presents philosophically sound rebuttals, in a way which makes them sound weak and timid. When it comes to in-person debates, the personas involved the debate really matter, and I've no doubt that the audience came away believing that Tzortzis wiped the floor with Lewis.

Overall rating: 3.5
Believer rating: 2.5
Unbeliever rating: 4.5

Underdown vs Berlinski in Beverly Hills

2009-10-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

This event wasn't a debate so much as one lecture followed by another one.

Berlinkski takes at least twenty minutes to get around to something like an argument, but he speaks well and tells a good story about magical thinking and scientific progress. He isn't arguing for theism, he is arguing for the legitimacy of the inference to design, both in biology and cosmology. His argument is essentially this: If we cannot yet explain something scientifically, such as the initial conditions of the universe, or the very first living things, or the world of mathematical abstractions, then it may be rational to infer that there is indeed mind behind the universe. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert paraphrasing Bill O'Reilly, "God exists, because I don't know how stuff works."

Underdown points out the difficult of putting God into gaps, namely, that the gaps keep closing and new ones keep opening up. If God lives in episemtic gaps, he surely skips about quite a bit. He also tries to put science (as a field) into historical perspective, and replies to a few more of Berlinksi's points

Hitchens & Fry vs. Onaiyekan & Widdecombe

2009-10-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

This debate was produced by the folks at intelligence squared and aired on the BBC, so you know it has fabulous production values as well as a sharply focused topic question, which was this: "Is the Catholic Church a force of good in the world?"

Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan goes first, and basically cites to the medical and missionary services which are provided in the name of the Catholic Church. He gleefully ignores all of the evils done in the name of the church, as if it never happened.

Hitch picks up the ball and runs with it, giving us a sense of just how many lives were ruined by the Crusades, Inquisition, systemic misogyny, forced conversion of indigenous peoples, silent complicity in the Holocaust, rape and torture of children in Ireland, the UK and US. He then drops the f(aggot)-bomb in allusion to the church's institutionalized homophobia. I'm not generally a fan of Hitchens, because I prefer carefully structured logic to explosive rhetoric, but even I couldn't help cheering him on in his well-presented litany of sins both venial and mortal.

British politician Anne Widdecombe is up next, and she decries all of Hitch's accusations as mischaracterizations. She also does a good job of enumerating some of the charitable things that the church has done to move first-world resources into third world nations.

Fry leads off with a kindly distinction between those moral individuals who pursue Catholicism on the one hand and the institutions and doctrines on the other. He then cites to (recently sainted) Thomas Moore's torturing and burning of those who owned English Bibles, and segues smoothly to a litany of moral evils, including the demonization of gays like himself and the lies about condoms which have demonstrably increased the spread of fatal diseases. Even though he is sharing the stage with Hitchens, Fry gets in the best line of the evening, "The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic Church in a nutshell."

Overall, this was a fantastic show, and even though no one put forth a rigorous argument with conclusions following from premises or attempted anything resembling a utilitarian calculus of goods minus evils, it was nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable and I commend it to your viewing.

Lewis vs. Tzortzis in the UK

2009-10-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

Hamza Andreas Tzortzis has clearly watched William Lane Craig and adopted his most effective arguments, that is, those which atheists have had the most trouble refuting on stage (as opposed to in print). He does an excellent job of presenting a Kalam Cosmological argument and a variation on the fine-tuning argument.

Richard Lewis makes the typical rookie mistake of going into rebuttal mode right off the bat, instead of giving his own affirmative arguments for metaphysical naturalism. Minus several style and effectiveness points for that. He does get around eventually to the problem of evil, but he even approaches that as if rebutting theodicies instead of outlining the argument in a positive way. Also, I must say that a few his rebuttals are indeed logically cogent, thought they are neither presented in their strongest form nor with a sense of personal confidence.

Instead of having designated rebuttal periods, they go straight into questions, which might explain why Lewis could not resist the opportunity to rebut during his opening time. Alas, adopting this format loads the dice even more heavily against Rick Lewis, on account of the highly devout audience.

Overall rating: 3.5 stars

Believer rating: 4.5 stars

Unbeliever rating: 2.5 stars

Wolpert vs. Cowburn in London

2009-09-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

Wolpert makes the case that religious faith is a natural outgrowth of human psychology, such as agency detection and causal attribution. He even goes so far as to claim that mystical thinking was itself advantageous in the infancy of our species. He has to restrain himself when speaking of Papal ethics, which I find perfectly understandable.

Cowburn leads off with both his scientific and Christian bona fides, claiming to believe wholeheartedly in both of these frameworks for understanding the world. He claims that science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. Personally, I'm somewhat sympathetic to this view. If God is above and beyond and behind all natural laws, you should not be able to use those laws to suss Him out. He goes on to enumerate a few outstanding abuses of science (involving the naturalistic fallacy) and tries to erect a conceptual wall of separation between the spires of Christian churches and ivory towers of scientific academia.

Wolpert comes back at Cowburn with a demand for some evidence or argument for the existence of God, and for evidence of the human soul and other such Biblical claims.

Cowburn rejects Biblical literalism on theological grounds, and completely avoids the question of souls because Wolpert had phrased it badly (inaptly using the term ‘reincarnation’) and goes on to praise science for a bit. He alludes to the first-cause and fine-tuning arguments as hints of the divine, and finally goes on to preach the gospel of Jesus using the high Christology of John. For some bizarre reason he calls this story a "pinch-point experiment" which can allow us to determine the deepest truths about life. Perhaps this was truly so, for those few women who first encountered the risen Jesus in the flesh, but for the rest of us, though, the gospels are hearsay piled upon hearsay, passed along orally for decades before being put to paper by authors who neither named themselves nor their sources.

Overall, this was not a particularly enlightening debate, and that despite both men managing to sound fairly intelligent and articulate. I wish that they had picked something narrower to dig in and really debate about.

Shook vs Geivett at CFI NY

2009-09-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

Theist vs. atheist debates usually provide the theist with a home field advantage, but this debate took place at the Center for Inquiry (video, audio) and so for once the theist is on playing for the away team.

Doug Geivett leads with the usual arguments from first-cause, fine-tuning, and human morality. He does a fairly decent job in his presentation, and that despite not being one of the regulars on the apologetic speech and debate circuit. John Shook addresses several of these same issues in his opening, arguing that the evidence on these matters leads to agnosticism at worst and metaphysical naturalism at best. He also does a fairly good job in his opening presentation, although he spends too much time rebutting and not nearly enough time making affirmative arguments that nature is most likely all that really exists.

Things get a bit weird on rebuttal and cross, as each speaker insists that the other one failed to address his own arguments and tries to shift the burden of proof back on to the other guy. I wish they had drilled down a bit more on the nature of causation or morality, because that would have helped to resolve the seemingly irresolvable duel of opposite intuitions into which such debates most usually plunge.

Here is a more detailed review. I disagree somewhat with Luke's statement that they did not directly address each other's points, since Luke pointed several instances in which they did precisely that.

Williamson vs. Craig at University of Saskatchewan

2009-09-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

Craig leads off with his usual arguments from first-cause, fine-tuning, objective moral values, minimal historical facts argument for Jesus resurrection, and the non-argument from subjective religious experiences.

Interestingly, Craig dismisses the world ensemble theory by claiming that he knows exactly what our universe (of all the universes) should look like if the ensemble existed. Perhaps he should publish in journals of cosmology rather than apologetics, if he indeed he has so greatly outstripped the finest minds working in theoretical physics.

By "objective moral values" Craig evidently means moral values which are universally binding upon all moral agents on account of having been laid down by an immaterial atemporal nonspatial transcendent cosmic supermind. Seems to me he is question-begging a bit by building this in as a premise to his argument from moral values.

Williamson starts off rather weakly, avoiding any positive arguments from the truth of metaphysical naturalism, and instead brewing us some weak tea on the burden of proof and the nature of unbelief. He thereby wastes at least a third of his opening statement time before finally getting around to arguments from incoherence and a version of the argument from evil. His presentation of the arguments from incoherence is not particularly strong, and his argument from evil isn't fleshed out. Also, he completely muffs the closing of his opening.

During rebuttal, Craig systematically dismantles Williamson's arguments, although Craig's ideas of nonspatiality/atemporality/immateriality amount to little more than hand waving, since he does not even attempt to show that these attributes can be coherently applied to a mind. Williamson's rebuttal is nearly as ineffective as Craig's was effective, mostly because Williamson rambles on various topics while more or less failing to directly address any of Craig's arguments until he pretty much runs out out of time. At this point, those of us hoping for a robustly two-sided debate start looking for the concession stands.

Seriously, where does Craig keep finding these guys? College profs, please realize that a career spent lecturing to undergrads, however good you may be at it, does not at all prepare you to debate someone who is experienced at the art of public debate.

Overall rating: 3.5 stars
Believer rating: 4.5 stars
Unbeliever rating: 2.5 stars

Turner vs. Robertson and Morgan on the radio (UK)

2009-09-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

David Robertson is such a blisteringly arrogant prick. He is talks for less than sixty seconds before dropping the Stalin and Hitler bombs and accusing secularists of being crazed utopian fundamentalists who will inevitably take society to hell given half a chance. Ed Turner counters that it is folly to link any sort of totalitarianism (religious or irreligious) with the liberal secular humanism advocated by secularists in Britain. This leads to a lengthy tangent on the nature of morality, in which the theists argue that there is no point being moral for the sake of other people, only for the sake of pleasing God. Indeed, they seem to say that morality cannot be understood except as a set of supernaturally ordained rules.

Robertson's lack of historical perspective is glaring throughout the show. At one point he actually claims that the ideals of "democracy and concepts of tolerance and free speech stem from Christian theology and philosophy" which seems to ignore the one and a half milennia between the ascendency of Christian ideas and the rise of modern liberalism which Robertson praises. He also conflates modern liberal secularism (which depends upon freedom of speech and religion) with the great totalitarian regimes fueled by Stalinism, Maoism, Kimism, and the like. Can these be any more different?

Morgan is an interesting figure, making a case that cultural secularization has ruined France, causing the France to turn to anti-depressants, wine, and the like. Not very persuasive, but it's a different angle on things.

I've got to give Ed Turner credit for keeping up with several Christians, all of whom are hoping to see him falter and fail. He really did his homework prior to the show, especially repecting Robertson's worldview and arguments.

The topic question for this episode was supposed to have been whether Europe would be better off Christian or Atheist. Oddly, no one took the oppotunity to graph out some quantative indicators of societal health (e.g. infant morality rates) along with self-reported religiousity measures (e.g. church attendance) in Europe over time. Doing so would have been quite instructive.

Hitchens vs. D'Souza in Orlando, FL

2009-09-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

Yet another debate between Hitchens and D'Souza, in which both debaters attempt to pump the intuitions of the audience as much as possible without making anything resembling a rigorous argument. They each deploy their usual rhetoric, Hitchens appealing to the human desire for liberty from tyranny, while D'Souza appeals primarily to the human desire for paternal love and blessing.

Here is an example of the sort of "argument" you get in this debate: Christianity is unique in claiming that God came down to Man, while all other religions are merely ways for Man to come to God. One might suppose D'Souza doesn't go in much for comparative mythology.

Here's another one: The sun will go out and the universe end in heat death, therefore it is clear that God did not design either the solar system or the universe. Bill Craig would take all of 30 seconds to dismantle this one, as indeed he did upon another occasion.

I've often wondered why popular debaters continue to use the same exact arguments over and over despite having been strongly rebutted either on paper or in person. I am supposing it is because they are more concerned with scoring points right then and there than they are with intellectual consistency in the long term.

I'm also discontent with the format of this debate, which is to give each speaker very short segments on specific topics. I'd much prefer more time for development of an argumentative framework upfront, and more discretion to the speakers on how to do so.

Overall, I'd not recommend this one, since each of these men have performed significantly better on other occasions.

Crossley vs Bauckham on the radio (UK)

2009-09-05T23:45:00.000-07:00

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Bauckham essentially makes the case that Mark was indeed the translator and transcriber of the eyewitness Peter, and that the gospel of John was indeed authored by the disciple John. I'm unclear on why people might think these arguments are in any sense novel, but then I've not yet read the book.

Crossley puts up a weak defense of the cricitcal scholarly consensus regarding these sources, which is essentially that they were associated with particular names of disciples long after they had been in circulation and use within the churches. He fails, for example, to press the question of how Peter could have forgotten the amazingly high Christology of Jesus himself along with several amazing miracles when recounting the his eyewitness tale to John Mark. This discussion could certainly have used a detailed drill down on the differences between John and Peter's allegedly eyewitness stories.

Overall, Bauckham talks so much and Crossley fails so hard in his role as challenger of Bauckham's approach that the radio host has to step in to ask harder questions. These eps are essentially useless as debate.

Duke vs. Price on the radio (UK)

2009-08-22T22:22:00.000-07:00

In this episode of Unbelievable Christian Tom Price (of the OCCA) and atheist Barry Duke (of The Freethinker) discuss the question "Does religion make people unhappy?" which could well be an interesting issue to address using statistical data from international surveys. Alas, no such data are presented, evaluated, or even discussed.

The discussion goes back and forth on the various ways that religion might make people suffer or thrive, oftentimes leaning heavily on anecdotes of individual experiences. To quote the host "We've taken two points of view, and traded stories on them today." This approach proves entertaining, but not particular enlightening or persuasive.

Moreover, both speakers have some difficulty avoiding the inevitable meta-question, which is whether any particular religion actually provides an accurate description of the world. Because this problem transcends the question under debate, it seems to me that this debate might have been more fruitful had it been conducted by two unbelievers, with one of them arguing that religion may be instrumentally valuable in providing needed social goods even though it is false.

Ronald Numbers vs Paul Nelson on BHTV

2009-07-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/21107

An historian of science and creationist pseudo-scientist walk into a dialog. Cordial and informative chat ensues. Mostly they talk about how to approach finding the truth rather than what we should think is true, which is a bit too meta for my tastes. I'm more interested in arguing for or against metaphysical naturalism than hearing arguments about methodological naturalism versus fideism. Nevertheless, I've got to credit both speakers for being gentlemanly and seemingly well-informed.

Thunderf00t vs. Comfort

2009-07-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

http://youtu.be/N2FskTKrx40

Seriously, now, who the f*ck is this guy? I mean the guy on the left. Who is he, really? He is obviously intelligent and well-read and well-spoken, but I've no idea who he really is. I assume he is a grad student in biochem or something like that.

At any rate, this debate outright sucked as far as debates go, but totally rocked for sheer entertainment value. The preacher guy kept changing the subject and making seemingly random off-topic assertions (possibly engaging his magical powers of metaphyically libertarian free will) while the other guy kept trying to get him to back up, calm down, and carefully examine the meaning of his words. It was sort of like a philosophical comedy routine dialog, with a wacky clown playing off a straight guy. Worth watching while sharing a bong and a laugh, but don't expect too much depth.

Overall rating: 2.5
Believer rating: 1.0
Unbeliever rating: 4.0

Hearty vs Williams on the radio (UK)

2009-07-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

In this episode of Unbelievable, Peter S. Williams debates Peter Hearty on the subject of intelligent design. The first quarter hour or so provides a reasonably accurate and concise summary of the ideas usually put forth by ~~cdesign proponentsists~~ intelligent design theorists. Hearty counters at first by reducing ID down to its core, saying that you cannot so blithely make the jump from "we don't know how this happened" to "God must have done it." I'm afraid, however, that Behe's core argument is never fully outlined and analysed here, as has been well done elsewhere. They get down into the weeds pretty quickly, but are often sidetracked by phone calls and e-mails which generally don't help them dig into the core of the argument. There are a couple exceptions, notably the caller from around one half hour into the show. There is also a doozy of a call in almost an hour into the show which makes me feel just a bit better about being American instead of British. She says that the show needs a Ken Ham to keep things balanced, since both debaters are old-Earthers who accept common descent. That actually sounds like a fun idea for a reality show. A young earth creationist, an intelligent design theorist, and a scientist walk into a studio... At any rate, it was a decent conversation. They manage to cover a good deal of ground and provide the listener with a pretty good sense of the scope and depth of intelligent design theory. This one is worth hearing.

Myers vs Alexander on the radio (UK)

2009-06-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

First off, I cannot believe that this episode turned out to be the most downloaded of the entire show run, as it is not a particularly shining example of the show. Usually, it is both more informative and more like a debate in which the guests go back and forth trying to prove or disprove some particular proposition. From the get go, the presenter is clearly struggling to provoke PZ into saying something provocative. Thereafter, Alexander keeps trying to drag Myers off the subject of science generally and biology in particular, while PZ repeatedly call him out on it, continually dragging the conversation back to scientific means and methods. Around 42 minutes in, the interlocutors finally get into something like a geniune disagreement, but not for very long. Overall, the discussion was too meandering and random. Both men sounded intelligent and well spoken, but neither one did not came out strongly for or against any particular position or built a case for their position. They both agree on some crucial points, such as whether theology has any place in the laboratory, and how people arose biologically, among other things.

Cave vs Robertson at Gunnersbury Baptist (UK)

2009-06-13T23:45:00.001-07:00

http://www.gunnersburybaptistchurch.org/events/opentoquestion.php
(Scroll down to 13 June 2009)

Peter Cave characterizes humanism as he sees it and tries to give us reasons to believe that life isn't completely pointless even in the absence of a supervening intelligence who ultimately controls all events and severely punishes every soul who doesn’t precisely follow his plans, whatever they may be.

David Robertson, for his part, colours humanism in several and various ways, and somehow manages to mischaracterize someone or some idea at each and every point, but he does this quite smoothly and confidently. He also pulls out the Atheism = Maoism/Stalinism/Kimism idea, an old canard one which invariably triggers my gag reflex. He tops this absurdity by calling the Scandinavian nations thoroughly Christian, despite their noteworthy competitiveness for the title of most godless and secular nations on the planet, at least according to the professional demographers of religion.

They then go back and forth for awhile, in a friendly and lighthearted manner, using a direct cross-examination format (my personal favorite). Cave asks some tough questions, although not quite the right ones, and Robertson stalwartly and expertly defends his faith.

Overall, both men did just fine, however, they don’t quite drill down into the fundamental differences between faith-based and reason-based modes of thinking, not even during the protracted Q&A.

Orton vs. Robertson on the radio (UK)

2009-06-13T23:45:00.000-07:00

This episode of Unbelieveable was yet another debate over where might get one's moral ideas if not from stone tablets carved out on Mt. Sinai. Honestly, I wonder why Christians think this question is such a stumper. If you define morality to mean absolute commands which come down from above, then of course you'll need to have a god up on high giving out commands.

The atheist in this show is a layman and a bit of a try-hard, he barely gets a word in edgewise, much less a decent argument, though he is constantly being prodded by the host to do so. The Christian apologist, by contrast, rambles on and repeatedly claims that everything good and pure comes from Christianity while discounting any harms it caused along with the moral values of every other culture. Such old school cultural imperialism ought not be too shocking from a British minister and True Scotsman.

This one is not worth your time, even when played at 2x.

Humphreys vs. Holding on the radio (UK)

2009-05-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

In this episode of Unbelievable, James Patrick "JP" Holding (http://www.tektonics.org/) debates Ken Humphreys (http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/) on the question of the historical Jesus. I should wrn you that they don't really get into anything like substantive debate until after 25-30 minutes have gone by.

On his website, Holding defends extravagant miraculous and theological claims about what Jesus actually said and did in his life on Earth, but in the course of framing of this particular debate he manages to stake out a far more defensible position, essentially that Jesus of Nazareth was an actual rabbi who was alive during the early first century and had disciples and a wider following. Humphreys, by contrast, actually tries to defend the same position that he advocates on his website, namely, that Jesus was never an actual historical figure but merely and emergent mythic figure like William Tell or King Arthur.

Since Holding abandons his own actual position and defends the moderate middle ground of agnostic leaning scholars such as Bart Ehrman, he manages to come off as the seemingly more reasonable interlocutor in this discussion, but not without some cost to his reputation as a forthright and stalwart defender of the whole gospel.

Humphreys comes off as well-informed and passionate, thought (alas) a bit more of the latter than the former. He tries to show that the gospels and other source materials are "late and fake" but does not make nearly so strong a case as someone like Richard Carrier or Earl Doherty could have done. He should have focused more on the appearances of more and more biographical details of Jesus later and later in the game.

The only particular point that I'd like raise about this debate is that Holding is treading on very dangerous apologetical ground when he brings up the "edifying fiction" defense around 39:30 or so, because it plays right into the myther hypothesis that all of the gospels were also created in precisely the same way, and that they would be shelved under devotional fiction to this day if only we knew all the details of their origins.

Roughgarden vs. Wright on BhTV

2009-04-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

Now this is what I'm talking about when I argue that we must to "teach the controvery" (all of them, really) when we present the essentials of biological science to those in undergraduate programs.

In this diavlog, Roughgarden puts Wright on the defensive regarding selfish genes, sexual selection, and a number of other topics, including the joys of mating versus childrearing. She repeatedly upbraids those who do research without first clearly defining their alternative hypotheses. Wright, for his part, puts up a fairly good defense for someone who doesn't have a Ph.D. in biology.

Wood vs. Gulam in Romulus, MI

2009-04-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

Normally, I have some sense of whom I consider to be "on my side" in a debate, but this debate was between someone who claims that Jesus died for only three days and someone who claims taht Jesus somehow survived crucifixion. The apriori probabilites of each event seems relatively low, since we only know of one person who allegedly survived crucifixion (from Flavius Josephus) and we have relatively few historically verifiable stories of reainmated corpses, despite a recent resurgance in the popularity of zombie flicks.

Oddly enough, I found that the Muslim debater was making arguments which I am used to hearing from skeptics such as Richard Carrier, Bart Ehrman, and Robert Price. Part of his argument is essentially that since the gospel accounts are inconsistent on key points, we cannot trust them on their crucifixion accounts.

Of course, the Christian has the better arguments here, because pretty much all of the accounts which might possibly be construed as historical narratives are on his side. That said, he doesn't do nearly so well as one might expect given such an overwhelming advantage.

Carr vs. Cole on the radio (UK)

2009-04-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

In this episode of Unbelievable, we hear from atheist blogger Steven Carr and Canon Michael Cole on the topic of whether Jesus rose from the dead. We also hear from any number of ignorant Britons who call in to broadcast their lack of understanding on the medium wave radio.

Unless you are a sadist (like myself) bound and determined to listen to every debate on this topic, I'd advise you to move on right now. This debate consisted primarily of the skeptic noting that the early epistles do not seem to have any notion of a physical (rather than merely spiritual) resurrection and empty tomb, while the cleric repeats over and over that you have the take the New Testament as a whole. Really, I just summed up the entire first hour of the show. They hardly even scratch the surface on the gospels as sources, whether reliable or otherwise.

Hitchens vs. Craig in Los Angeles, CA

2009-04-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

About a score of freethinkers from all around OKC converged on Trinity Baptist Church in Norman, OK for this event. Good times were had by all on hand, so far as I could see. Theists and atheists sat cheek by jowl, and were generally polite and respectful each to another. It was quite a fine and rare sight to behold.

Craig lead with his usual five arguments

1. Cosmological (Kalam)
2. Teleological (Paley/Ross)
3. Moral argument (Lewis)
4. Tomb / Epiphanies / Conversion (Habermas)
5. Properly basic beliefs (Plantinga)

None of these arguments are at all novel, and Craig makes most of them in mostly the same way in most of his debates, so Hitchens had absolutely no excuse for failing to directly address at least a few of them, even if philosophy is not exactly his bag.

Hitch leads with a bit of methodological criticism which sounds fairly ad homish, and then pretty much just goes off on the history of the Xn church and its various abuses of power and privilege. He also makes the argument that it seems absurd to expect a revelatory deity to only reveal Himself in to a few illiterate peasants in ancient Palestine relatively late in human history. Surely, it is absurd, but Hitchens pretty much leaves the details as a proof for the reader.

In the rebuttals, things go from bad to worse, as Craig pretty much refutes Hitch's main points
and repeatedly pounds him for failing to return the favor. At first, this is just unfair, since no one should have to rebut during their own opening, but eventually the accusation sticks and goes on to become the overarching motif of the debate. Hitchens increasingly rambles and mumbles, and one begins to fear the debate may become too one-sided to prove illuminating to all concerned.

Mercifully, though, someone at BIOLA decided beforehand to put aside time for cross-examination, and that is when things finally got interesting. Craig conceded the possibility of allegorical layering in the Matthean gospel, as well as giving away a few other tidbits to the schools of higher criticism. It was particularly gratifying to see these two stumping each other and pausing to gather their thoughts.

All things considered, this debate was worth attending, if only for the almost perfect ying/yang combination of these two particular speakers. I'd watch it again, once it hits the internets. Meanwhile, I can take out my frustration at Hitchens by watching this video over and over.

Unbeliever rating: 2.5
Believer rating: 4.5
Overall rating: 3.5

Law vs. Talbot in Oxford, UK

2009-04-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

This debate between Stephen Law and Marianne Talbot was unlike most of those that I've heard lately. Both debaters were quite cordial and clearly philosophically sophisticated, which makes for a significantly higher level of listening than I am used to from such events. This is a bit ironic here, because they both agreed to use Dawkins (deliberately unsophisticated) anti-theistic book as a jumping off point.

Marianne Talbot outlines a distinctly unusual God hypothesis and gives a few reasons for her lack of unbelief, from the perspective of a philosopher who has read a bit too much Berkeley. Money quote from the other side, "Your idea of God is a bit different..."

Stephen Law focuses primarily on the evidential argument from evil, and goes on to sublimely and rather ingeniously flip around all the standard theodicies in order to defend an hypothetical supremely evil and powerful deity. I'm definitely adding this guy to my reading list, and to my anti-W.L.C. debater dream team.

This debate would have been a rare 5-star event, but for the fact that Talbot's argument for god cannot seem to be recast into a deductively valid form. If someone can correct me on this, I'd be more than happy to accept the reproof.

Unbeliever rating: 5.0 stars

Believer rating 4.0 stars

Overall rating: 4.5 stars

Ehrman vs. Licona in Matthews, NC

2009-04-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona, both prominent Biblical scholars and historians, debated the resurrection of Jesus at Southern Evangelical Seminary in North Carolina (video, audio). As in their first debate, evangelical scholar Mike Licona has home field advantage and a very friendly crowd.

After a surprising amount of autobiography, Licona leads with three allegedly well-established facts from Biblical scholarship:

Jesus was crucified and died

Some disciples claimed to have seen Jesus afterward

Paul also claimed to have seen Jesus afterward

He goes on to claim that the best way to explain these facts is to conclude that the gospels are reliable in their claims of a literal bodily resurrection. His argument is that if you accept the New Testament accounts on these key details, you should go on to accept the gospels at face value, no matter how mythical the accounts might seem, because there is no point in ruling anything out as inherently unlikely, however miraculous it might be. Essentially, it is as if he lifted a resurrection-shaped hole out of the gospel accounts, and went on to note how perfectly he could plug that hole by reinserting the resurrection into the accounts from whence it was lifted. Of course, he manages to make it sound a good deal more reasonable than that, by going on at some length about historical methodology.

Ehrman's opening is a fairly strong condensation of his general case against the reliability of the gospels as historical sources, in which He uses the phrase "it depends on which gospel you read" at least two dozen times in reply to various historical questions he poses. He also provides a different account of historical methodology than that given by Licona. Ehrman seems to think that ancient written accounts are never going to be strong enough evidence to demonstrate the truth of a miraculous claim, given the very low apriori probability of such claims relative to other possibilities, e.g. mythmaking, hallucinations, dreams, visions, false memories.

On rebuttal, both speakers do a fine job of addressing their opponent's case head-on, which is surprisingly rare in these kinds of debates. I found Ehrman's rebuttal more effective, but then it seems to me that he had most of the relevant facts on his side. No doubt the audience saw it in a different light.

It should be noted that a major point of difference between the speakers lies in their treatment of probability, and neither one provides a full enough account of what probability theory really does in order to dispel his opponent's intuitions about how probability works. They would do well to go back to fundamentals on this issue. Mike even seems to posit that the relevant probability is the likelihood that an event takes place given that the most powerful being in the universe wants it to happen, which I'm pretty sure is a theological premise neither covered in his original three points nor established by independent argument.

Overall, though, this debate featured strong openings and vigorous give and take between two of the top scholars in the relevant field. Definitely worth seeing.

Mac Donald vs. Douthat on BhTV

2009-04-01T16:20:00.000-07:00

In this dialogue (which often borders on becoming a debate) Heather Mac Donald and Ross Douthat go back and forth on a number of issues of interest to secularists and theologians. At her insistence, they spend a good deal of time on the matter of temporal and cosmic justice, as well as the problems of evil and theodicy and religious episemology.

One of the more interesting features of this diavlog is that both of the authors here are firm and outspoken conservatives, though neither leans towards theocracy. This leaves them free to disagree about matters other than that usually featured at BhTV. Enjoy!

Hayter vs Robertson on the radio

2009-03-28T23:45:00.000-07:00

These two guys went on the Unbelievable show twice (part one, part two) that I know about.

In general, the host and producer of this show does a decent job of finding a bold, outspoken, and articulate Christian apologist and putting him up against someone who has little to no experience at public speaking and debate, a meek atheist who talks softly and haltingly. These episodes are no exception to the general run of the show, although there have been a few shining exceptions on occasion.

The program doesn't get very far in before David Robertson starts batting Adrian Hayter around like a cat toying with a mouse. It is vicariously embarassing to listen, and it serves as a warning to those who accept an invitation to play the role of Alan Colmes on a network that exists for the sake of making you look foolish.

You can safely skip these episodes, since there is rather little substantive debate to be found therein.

Smith vs. Jackson in Yukon, OK

2009-03-27T06:16:00.000-07:00

Last night, I went out with a few friends to watch Abbie Smith debate a renowned young-earth creationist and itinerant preacher named Charles Jackson.

My first impression was that she’s a Mac, and he’s a PC. Abbie came off as more spontaneous and vastly less rigid and pompous than her interlocutor, especially after she really warmed to her work. Dr. Jackson, by contrast, pretty much followed his usual formula, which you can enjoy on YouTube. Also, it is of some note that Abbie is waaaay friendlier in person than one might ever suppose from reading her blog. I already knew that, but still, the contrast was striking.

Probably the most striking part of Dr. Jackson's presentation was the part in which he admitted (and even displayed) the remarkable degree of homology between human and chimp genomes and then when on to claim that this evidence is not to be taken as confirmation of common descent, but rather as evidence of an intelligent designer who pretty much recycles as much genetic material as possible when making new species. This guy can speak the whole cosmos into being, but cannot seem to be bothered to invent too much in the way of unique gene sequences for the one and only species that created specifically in the hopes that they would eventually get around to freely loving and worshipping Him. Small wonder, then, that the humans so often take to murdering each other for access to resources and mates, as if they were naught but tallish, baldish apes.

The good doctor took this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, namely, that the chromosomal fusion event (absolutely necessary to confirm the theory of common descent) did actually happen, but it happened in humans - presumably sometime between the creation of Adam and Eve and the eventual extermination of almost the entire species in the Noahic flood.

Congratulations, then, to Dr. Jackson for putting forth a research agenda for creation scientists everywhere. His hypothetical homo sapiens with 24-pairs of chromosomes should be found in strata just below the Noahic floodline, having lived only a few thousand years ago, somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Once the unfairly marginalized (dare I say EXPELLED) research scientists of the ICR make this find, they will finally get the attention they so roundly deserve. Go to it, guys!

Unbeliever rating: 4.0 stars
Believer rating: 3.0 stars
Overall rating: 3.5 stars

Carrier vs. Craig in Maryville, MO

2009-03-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

This long-awaited clash between two men who are arguably the most learned representatives of the far-left and far-right of Biblical scholarship took place right here in the flyover states, of all places. I'd seriously considered making the drive out, and after hearing the quality of the only mp3 file posted thus far, I sort of wish that I'd taking the time and effort to do so.

On style and persuasiveness, Craig takes this one hands down. He was working with three significant advantages: the affirmative position, home-field advantage, and an inherent human tendency to prefer explanations based on intention to those based on the contingent results of unplanned natural processes.

On substance and logical coherence, though, Carrier almost pulled even about halfway into the Q&A, during which he managed to flesh out his valid arguments enough to make them more-or-less sound. Here is one, paraphrased and formalised a bit:

If early Christians were creating mythic tales instead of recording history as it actually happened, we would expect Mark's writings to be more detailed and fabulous than previous Christian writings, as well as less detailed and fabulous than later Christian writings.
In fact, this is precisely what we do see, inasmuch as the later canonical and non-canonical Christian writings generally do include more details and more fabulous stories than earlier ones.
Therefore, it is probably that Mark (and his contemporaneous oral historians) were making myth rather than recording historical events.

I'm not going to go into Carrier's empirical support for premise #2 here, but suffice to say it was expansive and difficult to rebut. However authoritatively and however many times Craig boldly declares that he has "multiple independently attested sources" it still doesn't make it so, and Craig at no point refutes the Carrier's arguments that the various resurrection accounts bear the marks of literary dependence one upon another.

Unbeliever rating: 3.75 stars
Believer rating: 4.25 stars
Overall rating: 4.0 stars

Baggini vs Beale on the radio (UK)

2009-03-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid=%7B96609dca-02b2-4902-ba99-1a29441449b1%7D

FFWD tip: Around 24:00 they finally start in on cosmological fine tuning.

Nicholas Beale (http://www.questionsoftruth.org/) makes the argument that because the constants of physics fall within a small range allowing for complex life, we can safely assume that our universe exists by for a reason, that is, by design. Incidentally, Beale is given almost ten minutes to lecture with only minor questioning from the host. To my knowledge, this has never happened to a guest sceptic.

Julian Baggini (http://julianbaggini.blogspot.com/) makes the case that it is a bad idea for theists to plug God into the epistemic gaps which science has yet to explain, because much of the time science comes along later on and fills those gaps with solid scientific theories. He says that it is a bad idea to leave religion vulnerable to scientific disproof in this way.

p.s. Big W00t 4 STAR TREK music!

Singer vs. Hare

2009-03-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

Moral Mammals - Why do we Matter? - Does theism or atheism provide the best foundation for human worth and morality? from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.

An excellent debate between two sophisticated moral philosophers over the ultimate nature of reality and morality. Singer makes the case that we should act to maximize happiness (broadly construed) because we like happiness and we empathize with other mammals. Hare argues that this is not enough, we need to be moral out of love and fear of the divine. They both do this persuasively and politely, and although I disagree with both of them I found the conversation most enjoyable.

Dr. Peter Singer leads with a series of questions on the nature of morality. Is it merely a matter of obeying rules from above? Is it a set of heuristics which help us to achieve some of our mutual goals? Do we not recoil at atrocity even if no one tells us it is wrong? He then fairly quickly launches into a brief exposition of the Euthyphro dilemma, concluding that we must make sense of moral ideas in terms other than theistic commands. He goes on to point out a few noteworthy difficulties with attempting to derive morality from either the Hebrew or Christian scriptures. He then provides a few thoughts on the evolutionary origins of morality and its analogues in the animal kingdom. He closes with an appeal to a modified form of the golden rule, one which roughly approaches a sort of universal prescriptivism.

Dr. John Hare (son of famed ethicist R.M. Hare) makes it clear up front that he and Singer have a similar sense of what entails the good, but he wants to argue about the question of moral motivation. “Why be moral?” one might ask, if one is concerned only with furthering one’s own happiness, and the commitment to morality becomes shaky at best. He quotes from the great utilitarian Henry Sidgwick to make the point that we are naturally motivated primarily to help ourselves and those close to us, as opposed to everyone equally, as demanded by the moral principle of universalizability. He then argues that we can overcome this bias for ourselves, our families, our tribes, etc. by trusting in God and following His universal laws grounded in His universal love for everyone. This brings us, quite naturally, to the problem of evil, to which Hare gives us the most bizarre retort I’ve ever heard with my own ears. He says that we need to take seriously the experience of those people (e.g. Holocaust survivors) who say that their faith sustained them in the face of great human evil, while implicitly discounting those who (equally sincerely) affirm that such terrible experiences forced them to reconsider and reject their faith. He makes a few more attempts to hang ethics on theism, few of which are more well grouded than this one.

During the rebuttal period, each speaker has another go at the foundations of ethics, and Singer basically concedes that if you are asking for a universal moral arbiter, the universe isn''t going to help you out with that. All that it will do is provide you with a multitude of preachers and gurus and mullahs who disagree on major issues.

The Q&A period features both distinguished philosophers sitting back and relaxing at the coffee table and chatting about written questions. Would that they'd haave gone back and forth questioning each other instead!

Bacrac vs Keller on the radio (UK)

2009-03-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

This episode of Unbelievable quickly disgressed into a debate over the origins of moral thinking, as they so often do. They go back and forth and mostly past each other for quite awhile.

Around 48 minutes in, they finally get down to brass tacks, when the Christian asks why we shouldn't simply prefer our cooperation to comptetiion in structuring our ethical systems? Alas, Bacrac's answer is essentially question begging, or else so poorly expressed that we cannot tell why he labels certain actions as immoral. What he ought to have said, "Those actions are wrong because they increase suffering and decrease well-being. In fact, that is precisely what we consequentialists mean when we call something immoral or wrong." He eventually gets around to saying something like this almost ten minutes later.

Keller puts theistic ethics in a nutshell around 1:05:30 "I'd rather submit to a tradition than set myself up as the arbiter of all truth. I don't trust my own heart."

Overall, I'd say that Keller manages to sound calmer and more reasonable than Bacrac, though he gets more than a little help from the presenter.

Buckner vs. Bocchino at Georgia Tech

2009-03-05T23:45:00.000-08:00

This one was a geniune debate, but in an odd format. Instead of opening statements, the moderator asked the interlocutors a series of questions, starting from very basic assumptions about reality. Questions such as "Does our reality need to be scientifically verifiable or falsifiable?" and "How does one's belief or non-belief in God alter one's perception of reality?" and "What is the reality of free will?" and "Is there any ultimate purpose to life?"

With such questions as these, you may well imagine that the debate might be somewhat weak tea, and you'd be correct. While things do pick up a bit later on, I'd say that this on is not exactly worth an hour of your time, expecially given the annoyingly scratchy audio.

Here is a more uplifting review.

Dembski vs. Ruse in Norman, OK

2009-02-28T23:59:00.000-08:00

I've been to many a debate before, and I've seen and heard many more courtesy of the internet, but I've never before seen or heard two well-educated people debating the relative merits of evolution vs. creation. As of last night, I still haven't.

Ruse made the case that intelligent design (ID) is really creationism via miraculous divine intervention, and therefore not 'science' in the usual sense, that is, the investigation of natural phenomena via observation and testing. He did this ably enough, but at no point seemed to bring any arguments to bear on the question of whether creationism is TRUE or FALSE; a question of some interest to Oklahomans who seem to be generally unconvinced by scientists with all their fancy cladograms and chromosomal breakpoints and other such what-nots.

Dembski, by contrast, made the same arguments that he made last time he was here in favor of the idea that at least some natural phenomena are divinely designed rather than naturally evolved. His argument, in essence, is this:

Some aspects of nature (e.g. bacteria flagella, clotting factors) are so well-put-together that we cannot now conceive of how they possibly came to be in an incremental fashion, as every component part appears to be essential to fulfilling its current function
If we cannot now conceive of how such things came together in an evolutionary, stepwise, incremental fashion, then they must have come together via an intelligently guided process
Therefore, we can conclude that such things were intelligently designed

Of course, the problem here lies in step 2, in which Dembski boldly claims that in the absence of a current evolutionary explanation, we must default exclusively to divine design rather than remaining open-minded. He makes no argument to support the idea that this is a rational default position, instead relying on the fact that most everyone in the room had just such a view indoctrinated into them during Sunday School, when they were still too young to think for themselves.

Note that Dembski (and most other ID theorists) prefer to confine their speculations to the deepest depths of evolutionary history, such as the evolution of intracellular mechanisms, which are not well understood because they happened very long ago. Thus, they ensure themselves the benefit of massive, god-sized gaps in which to cram a creator deity or three. It would be quite interesting to see the ID crowd attempt to make the case that humans are themselves designed, rather than simply tweaked up a bit from ancestral chimps. To my knowledge, they've not attempted to do this, much to the disappointment of the Trinity Baptists and others who are funding the evangelists of ID in hopes of bringing the cosmogony of Genesis 1-2 to the science classrooms.

Cave & Nugent vs. O'Mahoney & Cowper in Cork, Ireland

2009-02-23T10:32:00.000-08:00

This debate was certainly original, sporting a number of unusual features. Firstly, it was done in a grand tradition of an ancient philosophical society with a formal resolution to be either carried or defeated. Secondly, it was done with two speakers on either side, two for and two against the proposition. Thirdly and finally, it generally eschewed modern apologetics and counter-arguments in favor of more venerable arguments.

While there were plenty of rhetorical stingers in this back-and-forth, there was nothing really resembling a formally valid deductive or inductive argument given on either side. While this is all too common, I still find it frustrating to, as it is impossible to point out where exactly your opponent goes wrong if he doesn’t bother to elucidate his premises and show how his conclusions follow therefrom. If you cannot even tell whether someone has made an argument that is valid and sound, then you will tend to agree or disagree with his views not because they are persuasive but because of your own predispositions. At that point a debate becomes a bit of a farce rather than a process for finding the truth.

All told, this event was mildly entertaining but ultimately underwhelming, unelucidating and unsatisfying — a bit like reality television.

[2009-02-23]

DiCarlo vs. Boot in Oshawa, ON

2009-02-22T18:16:00.000-08:00

This debate is unique in any number of interesting ways. The skeptical speaker is avowedly agnostic on the question of deism, and he's not "down on religion" but thinks that religious belief does plenty of good. Moreover, the believing speaker is clearly well-versed in post-modern philosophical thought, which is something that I don't usually hear from priests or theologians.

Also, the extent of crowd participation and number of applause lines were exceptionally great in this debate. Lines like "it is impossible for all world religions to be right, but it is possible for all world religions to be wrong" and "I don't need a divine hand patting me on the back to do good" get big applause, and even this guy gets a big shout out from the peanut gallery.

As to the arguments themselves, I think it is accurate to say that each speaker talked past the other to some extent. The skeptic went after Biblical literalists, while the believer went after communists, existentialists, and nilihists. I suppose there are those who might suppose most believers and unbelievers fall easily into such categories, but surely this is not so.

Unbeliever rating: 3.5 stars
Believer rating: 2.5 stars
Overall rating: 3 stars

Dennett vs. Plantinga in Chicago, IL

2009-02-21T23:59:00.000-08:00

In this presentation (which mutated into a debate) one certainly gets the sense that Alvin Plantinga is just plain bluffing. He throws up plenty of nifty maths onto the whiteboard, but these serve primarily to obfuscate his false premises rather than bring enlightenment to the audience. Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism was thoroughly rebutted some time ago, and he seems even not to be unaware of these cogent criticisms of his position. Moreover, he seemed not to notice when Dennett explicitly rejected and refuted his key premise.

A bit of background is necessary here, because Plantinga's argument is fairly technical and most people don't much grok maths, especially Bayesian probabilities. Suffice to say that for his argument to go through he must show that humans most always form true beliefs about the world [ P(R)≈1 ] and that probability of this happening if metaphysical naturalism and evolutionism are true is low [P(R|E&N)≈0].

Alas, Plantinga fails to substantiate either of these claims in anything like a rigorous logical fashion. He more or less assumes the truth of the former premise and pretty much hand-waves his way to the latter. When a brilliant logician such as Alvin Plantinga is waving his hands instead of outlining a deductive argument, well, caveat emptor.

A couple points must be made here. Metaphysical materialists cannot assume P(R)≈1 since we believe that all talk of gods, spirits, ghosts, chakras, etc. is all so much bunk. People around the world make up all sorts of wacky beliefs about disembodied minds and imaginary forces emanating therefrom, thus, P(R) is evidently nowhere near unity. Moreover, since most religions (with a few interesting exceptions) assert that all other religions make up all sorts of untruths about the world, which are integrated into their devotees worldviews, it seems odd for any religious person to argue that humans almost always form true beliefs about the world. Finally, it should be evident from the abundance of material at sites like http://www.snopes.com/ and http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ that we humans are prone to all manner of irrational thinking, not least of which is a tendency to attribute agency where none exists.

Secondly, while the probability P(R|E&N) is nowhere near unity, it is neither so low as to allow Plantinga's argument to go through. The crucial question here is whether we would expect naturalistic evolutionary mechanisms to select for true beliefs over false ones. This question is not nearly so simple as it sounds (or as Plantinga's treatment suggests) but it should be fairly obvious that it is generally far easier to program a neural network to solve problems of adaptivity by providing adaptive goals and good data than by providing maladaptive goals and bad data.

Dennett managed to raise some of these points by way of an awkward analogy, but to be fair he was dealing with a mathematical smokescreen while standing up. This is something no one should be expected to do.

Hitch vs. Everybody

2009-02-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

This was a panel discussion in which several popular Christian apologists have a go at the Hitch. Perhaps surprisingly, he manages to hold his own.

At first each speaker makes very brief outline-style arguments (less than five minutes per speaker) none of which are nearly fleshed out and all of which are quite the usual fare. Then they all start going back and forth (perhaps inevitably) on the theological problem of evil and the nature of evil.

Hitchens moves on a bit with his usual hypothetical question "Can you name any moral action that can only be taken by a religious believer?" The theists respond, funnily enough, with tithing and worship. Hijinks ensue. This part wasn't particularly enlightening, as far as I can see. Of course Christians frame morality in terms of obedience, and of course secular humanists do not.
The interlocutors then have a go at the veractiy and verifiability of miracles, and then go aroudn on various topics in the field of philosophy of religion. As usual, the theists argue strenuously that any morality based upon one's own moral feelings of empathy for others is clearly and obviously inferioir to the morality of the slave who takes joy from obedience to his master. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Overall this was an enjoyable discussion, but don't expect too much depth on any given topic.