Buckner vs. Tzortzis in London

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

Layfield & Tee vs. Tzortzis & Deen

http://www.archive.org/details/BrianLayfieldRobertTeeVs.HamzaTzortzisAdamDeen

Hamza Tzortis leads off by quoting Dr. Craig’s argument #1 (Kalam cosmological argument), borrowing so heavily therefrom that he occasionally goes beyond homage to something more like reenactment. He manages to waste a bit of time over actual infinities here, but otherwise he does a fairly good job. As usual with the Kalam, the argument is founded upon an invalid equivocation to get us from "begins to exist" in the usual sense of the phrase (rearrangement of matter into a novel form, over time, via natural forces) to a completely unique cosmological sense of the phrase.

Brian Layfield starts off with reminiscences of his childhood. (This is almost never a good sign.) He eventually gets around to a relatively robust presentation of the problem of human suffering, and throws in a few other tidbits.

Adam Deen focuses upon provides us something very much like Dr. Craig's argument number #3, an argument from the existence of something he calls “objective moral truth,” and just like Dr. Craig, the argument here merely assumes submission to Authority is the only sort of universal morality worth considering. Coming from a Muslim (one who submits to Allah) this is not particularly a particularly surprising view. Also, since neither Tzortis nor Deen credit Craig for their arguments, I must wonder about whether they think there are any objective moral truths to be had on the topic of plagiarism.

Robert Tee leads off, oddly enough, with radiometric dating of rocks and such, and goes on to make a several scientific arguments against creationism. I’m assuming that he is assuming that the theists in the room are primarily creationists, and for all I know he is correct about this. In any event, he gets nailed on cross-ex for taking this approach.

Overall, this event isn't worth watching, but it does serve one useful purpose, that is, as a demonstration that generic arguments for a Creator Deity work equally well for any flavor of monotheism. Of course, this implies that such arguments tell us so little about the nature of the One True God, that we would have to go far beyond them in order to embrace some particular faith. Even if the arguments of Tzortzis and Deen went through (and I've already shown why they fail) they would at best admonish us to have faith in the god of Spinoza, Paine, and Einstein, rather than the God of Abraham, Jesus, or Mohammad.

Ali vs. Husain in Westminster, UK

This debate is worth hearing at least twice, because it deals with issues rarely addressed in debates between believers and unbelievers, or for that matter, in any context.  Essentially, this is a debate over whether Islam should be revived, reformed, or refused.  Ed Husain says, “I’m not here to defend Muslims, I’m here to defend Islam,” while Ayaan Hirsi Ali counters with “I am not here to defend Islam, I am here to defend Muslims.”  This is to say that Husain is a liberal believer and former fundamentalist who claims that his faith may yet undergo an ideological renaissance with serves to elevate the thinking of Muslims throughout the world, while Ali is a humanist and former believer who would prefer individuals who identify as Muslims to elevate themselves by choosing reason over faith.

It seems obvious enough to me that both Ali and Husain are correct on most of the vital issues they discuss, such as civil rights and secular law, and they disagree only on whether faith itself is worth having and maintaining.  I consider this an open question, although it seems clear enough to me that secular democratic societies cannot liberalize unless the religious faiths of the citizens do so as well.  The foreign policy question for us westerners must be how best to encourage majority Muslim nations to allow for both liberal faith and religious infidelity, in other words, how to create free and open civil societies rooted in the cultural context of Islam.  I do not know how to address this quandary, though I am fairly certain that bombing people into the Stone Age (a common enough sentiment here in the Bible Belt) is not the answer. 

Interestingly, Husain and Ali seem to agree that there is a narrow path which might allow for Muslims to create their own free, open, civil societies, by focusing on earlier textual traditions within Islam.