Hitchens vs. Craig in Los Angeles, CA

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

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

Dennett vs. Plantinga in Chicago, IL

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.  

Hitchens vs. D'Souza in Boulder, CO

Links to debate: video, mp3

D’Souza cedes ground early on by narrowing the playing field to arguments “rooted in reason, and skepticism, and history, and philosophy, in other words, Christopher Hitchens and I are debating…on the same ground.” It wasn’t a particularly good idea for him to play to his opponent’s strengths up front. A professional debater such as William Lane Craig would never make such a mistake against such a learned opponent.

As he did in against Barker, D’Souza leads with a list of secular virtues:

• Individuality
  
• Dignity of women
  
• Abolition of slavery
  
• Compassion as a social virtue
  

Once again, his opponent does take the trouble to point out that these virtues have been retarded by religious faith at least at much as they’ve been advanced thereby. One need only look at the official position of the Church of England on (1) the individualist manifestoes of the Enlightenment era, (2) the suffragette movement, (3) the abolition of slavery in England, and (4) radical life-saving advances in medicine. In each case, England’s faith-based bastion of transcendental moral virtue lagged behind the English-speaking culture at large, which definitely undercuts D’Souza’s claim that it was the Christian faith which drove things forward.

Hitchens’ main argument (like Hitchens himself) was interesting if a bit sarcastic, “Life was nasty, brutish, and short. For the first 98,000 years of [human history] heaven watches with indifference. Who cares? Doesn’t look terrific, but they’re inching along, I guess. Let’s see how it goes. Two thousand years ago, it is decided, actually now we have to intervene - but only in illiterate parts of the Middle East. To reveal Our Face to the species and tell them how to behave - that should do it.” Hitchens claims that if you can believe this, you can believe pretty much anything about theology and ethics.

Eventually, they got around to cross-examining each other to great effect. While Hitch gets in more barbs, D'Souza manages to seem composed and even a bit amused.

De Sousa vs. Craig in Toronto, ON

In the rebuttal period, Craig easily dispatches De Sousa's arguments, mostly because the freethinker failed to frame any of them in any sort of rigorous way. De Sousa has a bit of a go at refuting Craig's usual five arguments, but he is far too long-winded to do so at all effectively. He does at one point make an interesting case regarding Craig's misuse of prior probabilities in the fine-tuning argument, but doesn't quite stick it.

The cross-ex was, as usual, more entertaining and enlightening than the openings and rebuttals, but even so De Sousa fails to acquit himself as should one armed with better facts and arguments. Alas!

• Unbeliever rating: 2.75
  
  
• Believer rating: 4.25
  
  
• Overall rating: 3.5

Singer vs. D'Souza in Los Angeles, CA

In this debate, both Peter Singer and Dinesh D'Souza lead with the argument that the other guy's ideology suffers from a problem of evil.  D'Souza argues that the godless communist regimes were quite horrifically murderous, while Singer's argument is basically that a Heavenly Father would never allow such atrocities to happen.  Neither of these interlocutors manages to quite directly rebut the arguments of the other, possibly because they were still making new arguments during their rebuttal segments.  Singer does manage a stinging reply noting that theistic ethics justified genocide and rape in the Old Testament, issues which D'Souza pretty much ignores.  They also go back and forth a bit on cosmology and fine-tuning, but not to any great effect from either side.

Overall rating: 3.5 stars

Levin vs. Alexander in Cambridge, MA

This debate is among of the best I’ve heard on deep matters of metaphysics, though it strayed a fair bit from the topic question at times.  Muchos kudos to the Veritas Forum for bringing together two presenters who were articulate, brilliant, cordial, & downright erudite, for good hearty intellectual jousting. 

Since I’m an unregenerate cynic, thought, I’ll start with the low point of the event.  Probably the worst argument of the talk was this one from Dr. Alexander:

1. Memes are (by definition) ideas which spread primarily due to characteristics other than rational persuasiveness.
   
   
2. If some ideas are memes, then all ideas must be memes, including the idea of memes itself
   
   
3. :. Meme theory cannot be rational, and implodes in a paroxysm of self-contradiction
   

Of course, he fails to make premise #2 explicit in his argument, presumably because if he had done so he would have seen this argument as unsound and not bothered to utter it aloud.  Perhaps there is some way to salvage this argument by recasting as inductive, but I cannot see how right at the moment.

For the most part, though, this debate is a fine exchange of worthwhile arguments and pointed counter-arguments.  Definitely worth a listen or two. 

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

p.s. I’ve developed a bit of a crush on Jenna Levin.  Why didn’t we have any girls like that in my old physics department?

Dacey vs. Craig in West Lafayette, IN

The first Dacey/Craig debate hits many of the major strong points on both sides, and therefore is a good place to start if you are unfamiliar with the arguments usually given by theists and atheists in favor of their respective positions.

Common Sense Atheism provides an excellent overview of this debate:

Craig gives his usual arguments. Dacey responds with 5 facts that fit better with atheism than with theism: the hiddenness of God, the success of science, the mind-brain connection, evolution, and the abundance of pointless suffering. Craig says that it’spossible to fit all these with Christian theism.  * * * 

In general, Dacey does a better job of being clear and organized than most of Craig’s other opponents, but in the end Craig is still more organized and had good-sounding responses to Dacey’s arguments that Dacey didn’t get a chance to rebut.

That asute blogger also points out that more than once Dacey “chooses just about the weakest counter-argument he could have picked” which is why I found this debate ultimately disappointing, though both debaters started out quite strong in their opening statements.

Most disappointing of all was that Dacey more or less allows Craig to get away with a “retreat to the possible” in which Craig asserts that each of Dacey’s five facts might somehow be made to fit within a Christian worldview.  Of course, nearly anything logically fit within nearly any worldview, given enough flexibility in the fundamental premises.  God might be a really subtle fellow who prefers to remain inscrutable and indiscernible, with a fetish for the workings of natural law as a means of creating and sustaining intelligent life, and divine indifference to the mind bogglingly massive amounts of earthly suffering.  Craig suggests as much in his rebuttal to Dacey, and Dacey pretty much lets it slide.  This is particularly galling as Craig is not arguing for the god of deism (towards which many avowed atheists are actually agnostic) but rather the god of Christian theism, which is far more difficult to reconcile with Dacey’s list.

The crucial epistemic problem here is that metaphysical naturalism (the view that everything that exists is natural and operates naturally) strictly requires every one of Dacey’s five points to be true, whereas theism neither predicts nor requires any of them to be true.  If Dacey’s audience is convinced of his five points, they have to conclude that these facts are necessary to metaphysical naturalism, while they are merely compatible with deism and only arguably possible on Christian theism.  It doesn’t take a Bayesian mathematician to figure the odds here.

Altogether, I'd give this one 4 stars, 3.75 for Dacey and 4.25 for Craig.

Tabash vs. Craig

This debate is surely among the best I’ve heard, inasmuch as both debaters bring their strongest arguments and give very little ground.  Moreover, it may be the only debate in which William Lane Craig is evidently struggling to keep up.

Eddie Tabash’s opening argument can be summed up in a question from philosopher James Teller, “ Why should God expect us today to seriously consider something that God did not expect contemporaries of the event to seriously consider without a miracle?”  Tabash goes on to point out that it would be relatively easy for an all-powerful deity to reaccomplish the resurrection to a live television audience of billions, along with providing all manner of scientifically verifiable evidence.  This argument somewhat resembles arguments put forth by Hitchens and Ehrman, who contend that it makes no sense for a cosmic deity to reveal itself in only one time and place to a very small group of devout and uneducated followers.

Tabash then tears into Biblical morality, particularly the injunctions to commit genocide and rape, and then goes on to recapitulate and illustrate variations on the arguments from evil and unbelief.  He then attacks the idea of the afterlife, the soul, mind/body dualism, and a few other theistic mainstays to boot.  To a significant extent, Tabash borrows heavily from Craig’s own style here, throwing out so many assertions and questions that it is more or less impossible for one’s opponent to address them all during the relatively brief rebuttal period.  This tactic has the virtue of switch-footing one’s opponent, but it may confuse and lose the audience at the same time.  I had to rewind the audio a few times myself, and I was raised up north where speaking rapidly is none too taboo.

Craig makes his usual arguments, but without quite the force and polish that I’m used to hearing from him.  Possibly, this is because he is ten years younger than at present, or else it could be because he was a bit flustered at meeting another professional debater as practiced and well-prepared as himself.  He makes some downright kalamitous assertions in support of his cosmological argument, and manages to sound a bit silly in doing so, at least to those of us who studied physics above the 101 level.  Craig also tries to sneak in Scripture at various points in his arguments and rebuttals, while at the same time averring that he is not required to defend Biblical inerrancy.  Ultimately, though, Craig does make a few strong arguments against the universality of Humanist ethics.  

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