Rubens vs Tzortzis at East London University

Islam or Secular Liberalism
13 Sep 2008



Tom Rubens starts out by waffling on a bit about the nature of faith and science and their respective approaches to knowledge. Not exactly a barn-burner of an opening here, but he makes a few cogent points. He goes on to address the problem of moral certainty in the abscence of divine commands, and I dozed off for a bit (If you are brand new to freethought, you might nevertheless find this part interesting).

Hamza Tzortzis leads off by attempting to distinguish between religion (as generally understood) and the One True Faith of Islam. Where haev I seen this move before? He then goes on to make a fascinating case against much of what Europeans and especially Britons have stood for, such as free markets, capitalism, individualism, personal liberty, and such. He blames the capitalism of weathly nations for the poverty of the poor nations, and the liberalism of free nations for their endemic crime and addication rates. He goes on to describe a few of the indisputably negative outcomes of recent Western military engagements in the Arab world. Finally, he makes a positive (but entirely theoretical) case for implementing sharia law as a solution to our marco-economic problems. Humorously, he has to go all the way back to the 15th century to find an example of a Jewish rabbi bragging about the toleration of minority religions by their Mulsim neighbors. Oddly, he doesn't seem to see the irony in this, but he ups the irony a bit more when praising the properly restrained excercise of jihad.

I have to point out that Mr. Tzortzis fails to provide any modern examples of Islamic economics, law, justice, and jihad, so as to demonstrate empirically their superiority by comparing Mulsim nations to other nations which have adopted secular and liberal values, nations like Japan, Denmark, or Canada. Nevertheless, he closes by saying that we should avoid abstract ideas in favor of ideas which have a pratical effect. No, seriously. At this point, my irony meter blew several fuzes, and now I'm wondering whether this sort of debate is covered under the warranty.

Whether you are seeking a clash of ideas, or simply a few profound and original ideas, you can safely skip this debate.

Hitchens vs. Turek in Richmond, VA

Christopher Hitchens/Frank Turek Debate on Vimeo.

Dr. Turek provides a handful of arguments, many of which are really the same argument stated with various degrees of cleverness and alliteration.  He sums up by saying that naturalists have to explain the following features of the universe:  

1. How the universe arose from nothing
   
2. How extreme fine-tuning and design arose from chaos
   
3. How life arose from non-life
   
4. How morality arose from materials
   
5. How reason and logic arose from matter
6. How mind arose from mud
   
7. How maths arose from molecules
   
8. How human freedom arose from blind forces
   
9. How consciousness arose from chemicals
   

Of course, problems #4-9 are all really asking the same question, "How do minds arise from matter?" which is really just a subset of problem #3.  The answer, in a word, is evolution.   Unfathomably long ago, self-replicating molecules came about through natural processes which we do not yet understand, and eventually lead to the massive biodiversity which we observe on Earth via a process of evolution by descent with modification.  This answer is provisional inasmuch as we've little idea of how the first replicators originally arose, but this hypothesis nevertheless has vastly more explanatory scope and power than Turek's so-call explanation, an immaterial immeasurable magical mega-mind moving by means and methods most mysterious.

Turek's first two arguments are essentially borrowed from Dr. Craig, and I've addressed those elsewhere.  I should point out, though, that modern cosmologists have had quite little to say about the properties of nothingness.  If the good Dr. Turek things he has new insights about t=0, he should perhaps get published and put them all to shame.

Hitchens leads with a brief homage to Thomas Jefferson, and then (oddly enough) Peter Griffin. He goes on to point out that Turek's arguments prove deism at most and that Darwin made most of them rather toothless quite long ago.  This is the closest that Hitchens comes to refuting any affirmative arguments.  Turek could have bit on this bait and started arguing about the evidence for evolution, but quite wisely declines to do so.

The cross-ex was spirited if a but rude at times.  Worth watching for its entertainment value, but do not expect much in the way of insight.  What I found most frustrating about this part was Hitchens' refusal to directly address the myth of an objective morality.  Alas, one ought not expect incisive debate from a rhetorician.

As to Turek, I must say that for his first foray into public debate, he performed amazingly well. Dr. Craig should watch his back and start demanding royalties whenever other apologists crib his best arguments.  

[09-Sep-2008]

Hitchens vs Prager vs DSouza (2008)

A Catholic, A Jew, and an Atheist walk into an auditorium... (video, audio)

Hitchens makes his usual spiel, which I consider more rhetorical than logical and more entertaining than persuasive. His opening statement sort of toys around the edges of Drange's arguments from unbelief and suffering, without actually stating the premises or making the arguments themselves.

D'Souza also gives us a variation on his usual spiel, including his personal background and an argument from cosmological fine-tuning to (presumably) deism.

Prager makes the argument that we can use "common sense" to understand cosmology, and that the atheist must explain how we went from nothing to Bach. He seems to believe that theism is a sort of default position, and anything less than an exhaustive scientific explanation of life, the universe, and everything should allow for reversion to his favored hypothesis -- a magical mind mediating by mysterious means.

None of the opening statements were particularly perspicacious or insightful, however, around 24 minutes in the various speakers start going back and forth and things really get going. At this point, the event rapidly turns into something I've only ever seen or heard on the internet, that is, an enthusiatic, energetic and enjoyable three-way exchange.

Shook vs. Craig in Vancouver, BC

Craig leads with his usual five arguments, after getting a bit of a dig in at Shook’s website. 

Shook leads with an unusual deductive argument which might be formalized along these lines:

1. Only those propositions for which there is good evidence are probably true.
2. There is not any good evidence for the claims of supernaturalism.
3. Therefore, supernaturalism is probably false, and naturalism probably true.

This is not a particularly good argument, but it is an argument nonetheless.  Craig claims that Shook made no argument whatsoever, but Shook clearly elucidated both premises during the course of his opening statement.  It is not to Shook’s credit that he failed to make more varied and affirmative arguments for naturalism, but taking this approach did free up some time to go after the arguments for theism.

On rebuttal, Craig actually sounds a little bit shook up - I’ve never before heard him interlarding his speech with disfluencies in the manner of mere mortal men.  He argues that even if there are no good arguments for God, that we still might reasonably believe in God, and then goes on to call this problem a “huge lacuna” in the debate.  I must agree, but surely such a gap would favor agnosticism rather than theism (Craig rightly points this out on cross).  Craig goes on to say that a “changeless self-conscious being” is a totally coherent concept, despite the fact that our inevitably subjective understanding of the phenomenon of consciousness is inherently and invariably temporal.  As Indigo Montoya once said, “You keep using that word.  I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

During his rebuttal period, Shook goes directly after Craig’s five arguments, which puts him ahead of almost all the freethinking debaters I’ve heard.  He fails to refute the bizarrely self-contradictory idea of an objective morality (existing solely in the mind of god) but he does have a go at Craig argument from objective morality.  More generally, Shook’s counterarguments are not quite as strong as they could have been, but kudos to him for having a go.  Interestingly, Shook uses something very much like the analogy to planetary (as opposed to universal) fine-tuning which I wrote about on my other blog so mega-kudos for that. J

Although Shook ought to have made a few positive arguments for naturalism (as Austin Dacey does) both debaters did a fairly fine job of casting reasonable doubt on their opponent’s arguments, and thus we have witnessed yet another AGNOSTIC WIN!

Overall rating: 4.5

[2008-07-01]

Cooke vs. Craig in Auckland, NZ

Craig gives his usual five arguments.  Cooke gives an interesting opening statement with a couple of potentially persuasive arguments, including a variation on the graveyard of dead gods which we have often heard from Hitchens.  On rebuttal, Cooke seems to have rather little interest in picking apart Craig’s arguments, which is a bit of a shame since they both agreed to have a debate.  Craig, as per usual, relentlessly pounds on his opponent for failing to effectively counter his apologetics, and in this case the accusation starts to really stick after a while.

Cooke started out strong in his opening but after that he falls flat out pretty quick.  It would seem that he brought a pillow to a fistfight.  Better luck next time!

Reinhardt vs. Anthony in Norman, OK

This event wasn't really a debate, because Unitarian Universalists are generally more interested in dialogue than in debate.  The theme was originally intended to be a discussion of values which people of very different faiths (or no faith) might have in common.  

It was a pretty fun time, and I did not get the sense that either speaker managed to converge on the possibility of a set of common values.  Perhaps we should have another go at it sometime.  

Avalos vs. Weikart from Des Moines, IA

This radio debate stands out in a few ways from those that I’m used to hearing.  It centers upon a highly unusual question, that is, whether Darwinian or Christian ideology more influence on the ideology of Nazism.  Moreover, the debate mostly cenetered around questions of history and personal ideology rather than scientific or philosophical arguments.  

Weikart leads with a number of points at which scientific or pseudo-scientific theories were incorporated into the Nazi theories about race.  He fails to address the obvious problem of the is/ought gap between scientific truths and moral imperatives and in this failure he falls (ironically enough) into more-or-less the same fallacious thinking that embraced by those he reviles: inferring that the scientific truths of Darwinism somehow imply the moral imperatives of “Social Darwinism” or enforced eugenics.  This problem is never resolved in this debate, nor even much addressed so far as I could tell.

Avalos comes out swinging a giant brickbat, composed  of Christian writings which resembled the Nazi agenda so strongly as to be downright disturbing in their prescience.  Here is the complete passage as quoted from an earlier English translation than that generally used today.  After quoting Luther at some length, Avalos challenges Weikart to find anything remotely resembling an SS to-do list from the writings of Charles Darwin.

They go back and forth for awhile, each pointing out particular way in which the other guy’s ideological forebears influenced Nazi ideology and propaganda.  Neither debater clearly gains the advantage, but it struck me that Weikart always had to make a couple of weak inferences to get From Darwin to Hitler while Avalos drew a fairly bold and straight line from Lutheran dogma to 20^th century German anti-Semitism.  

All told, it was not a bad listen, and doubly so considering it originated in terrestrial radio.

[2008-05-19]