Ehrman vs. Brown in Columbus, OH

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.

Brown vs. Craig in Toronto, ON

Craig leads with his usual arguments, each of which ought to be readily rebuttable: 

1. Cosmological argument from a cosmic first cause
   
2. Teleological argument from universal fine-tuning
   
3. Objective moral values cannot exist apart from God
   
4. Jesus lives!  (empty tomb / post-mortem appearances / Xn belief)
   
5. Altar call / subjective experiences

The first two arguments basically fall back on the following dichotomy, either the universe came to be the way it is because of (a) natural processes we do not fully understand or (b) some sort of immaterial non-spatiotemporal über-mind.  Craig puts forth nothing even resembling a valid argument which ought to lead a rational person to prefer the latter option over the former, but instead relies on a bit of hand-waving and an inherent human bias in favor of explanations rooted in agency rather than more difficult natural explanations (the details of which may or may not be forthcoming).  It blows my mind that Craig keeps getting away with this spouting this sort of question-begging poppycock from an academic pulpit, but there it is.

Craig’s third argument is just pointless, since “objective moral values” is a wholly nonsensical idea.  Values are by definition subjective, even if they happen to exist in the mind of a Cartesian evil demon or any other sort of bodiless spirit (only hardcore Platonists can even hope to contend otherwise).  Moreover, divine moral values are no good unless they are good values.  What good would it do the human race if the divine values permit slavery and genocide?

Craig’s fourth argument more-or-less assumes the reliability of the gospel narratives, an approach which only has persuasive force to someone who is already a Christian.  Few people believe that other people’s scriptures are anything other than myths, and this is just as it should be, since they usually contain all manner of fabulous stories which are completely unattested outside of their particular faith tradition.

Brown wastes a fair bit of time talking about classical arguments for and against God, before getting around to the problem of evil and a few moral conundrums related to theistic morality.  On rebuttal, Craig manages to make mincemeat of these, since Brown failed to start in on a properly evidential argument (at least not until his closing statement). He also wastes a bit of time on the nature of faith, again, because he fails to make a positive argument in favor of metaphysical naturalism.  This is a serious shortcoming, since merely pointing out that faith is not an argument is not an argument in itself.  If there are some people in the audience who could be convinced by the sorts of the arguments presented in a debate, they are surely not fideists.  Finally, Brown grants the existence of objective moral truths, at which point he may well have delivered his flag to Craig’s camp.  Considering the inherent weakness of the arguments from objective morality, this should be considered a gratuitous bit of self-harm on Brown’s part.

On rebuttal and on cross, these guys mix it up and both demonstrate a high-level of familiarity with various subjects while managing to cast substantive doubt upon almost all of the affirmative arguments which were given during the opening statements.  Brown, to his credit, manages to point out a number of the major problems with Craig’s arguments, though he does so a bit confusingly at times.  Brown makes up a good deal of ground after the opening statements, but never quite catches up.  It seems to me that Brown could have had Craig pinned and writing if they had been given another hour for cross-ex.  Alas…

Altogether, this is one of the better debates because of its high level of substantive interchange.  Definitely worth a listen.

•           Unbeliever rating: 4.25 stars
  
•           Believer rating: 4.75 stars
  
•           Overall rating: 4.5 stars
  

Date: 27-Jan-2009