Williamson vs. Craig at University of Saskatchewan

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

Williamson vs. Craig at University of Saskatchewan

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