Carrier vs. Licona in Los Angeles, CA

Debate: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

This debate started off as a bit of a joke, actually, with an hypothetical posed by historian John P. Meier which reads like one, “Suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and an agnostic were locked up in the bowels of the Harvard Divinity School library…and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was...” With this, Mike Licona proposes three major points which he believes would inevitably emerge in such a document:

1. Death by crucifixion
   
2. An empty tomb
   
3. Disciples’ epiphanies

Licona makes the usual arguments in supporting each of these three points, arguments which will be quite familiar to readers of Bill Craig, Gary Habermas, and Ronald Nash. However, he also makes a few unduly extravagant claims in the course of proving up these three points, such as the claim that Jewish authorities in Jerusalem could have easily disproved early Christian kerygma by simply producing an identifiable corpse. This might work well for 21^st century forensic crime scene investigators, but if one assumes that Jesus was severely beaten as depicted in, say, The Gospel According to Mel Gibson, then his body would have been fairly unrecognizable even before his death and inevitable decomposition. In any event, for this argument to work, one has to securely date the earliest preaching of the Christian kerygma to within a few weeks or months after Jesus death, at the outset. Licona does not even attempt to do this, though he implies it can be done.

Carrier paints a picture of rival mythmaking between Christian Gnostics and Sarcissists, each community seeking a way to preserve the message of Jesus which they had received, and each one creating new prophecies and myths to bolster their evolving theological frameworks.

1. Paul contradicts the Gospels as to the nature of resurrection, whether in a body of spirit or a body of flesh
   
2. Paul omits the post-mortem bodily appearances of Luke and John when describing the resurrection body
   
3. Paul resurrection doctrine was an exchange of the old earthly body for a new heavenly one
   
4. Amazing but true stories are rare, while amazing but false mythic tales are quite common
   
5. Insufficient historical evidence to class Jesus’ resurrection in the “amazing but true” category
   
6. The gospels bear the marks of legendary development and confabulation over time
   
7. Objective supernatural encounters are far less common than subjective religious visions
   
8. Paul’s personal epiphanies seem to fall squarely in the latter category rather than the former
   
9. Jesus’ post-mortem appearances are corporeal only in Luke and John, indicating mythical development
   

Probably the most learned and interested argument made by Carrier was in support of point #5, in which he outlines five kinds of historical evidence and then uses them to compare two putative historical events: Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon and Jesus’ empty tomb. Carrier argues that the Rubicon crossing has strong evidence from each category, and concludes that whereas the evidence for Jesus’ empty tomb as “the very worst kind of evidence, a handful of late, biased, uncritical, unscholarly, unknown, secondhand witnesses – that is not good evidence. Even seen in the best possible light, the evidence available is simply not sufficient to establish that there was an empty tomb.”

Neither debater does quite a thorough job in pointing out the weaknesses in his opponent’s case, although that is fairly normal when the time constraints are setup so as to allow for far more time for opening arguments than either rebuttal or cross. All things considered, this debate is among the most substantive on this particular topic.

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

Enjoy!

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.

Stenger vs. Craig in Honolulu, HI

In this debate Craig makes his usual five arguments and Victor Stenger (to his everlasting credit) stands out as one of Craig's fairly few freethinking foes to frankly address each of them during his rebuttal period.  However, Stenger’s positive arguments are relatively weak, or at least not nearly as strong as those we have seen from stronger debaters such as Tabash and Dacey.   Moreover, Stenger has a bit of trouble parrying Craig’s well-aimed rebuttals.  

I definitely got the sense that Stenger has his head wrapped around the fine-tuning problem, but it is by no means easy to articulate the answers without resorting to maths, which would doubtlessly lose the audience.  Not sure that this problem can be dealt with by explication in a time-constrained debate environment.  

Altogether, Stenger made a strong showing against a most formidable debater.

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

George vs. Miller in Edmond, OK

This debate was held between two local profs at UCO who are actually fairly good friends in real life, which makes for a fairly light-hearted and laid-back atmosphere which you almost never get from the guys on the professional debate circuit.  They also elected to remain seated, which adds to the informal look and feel of this event.

Dr. Doug Miller makes a fairly original argument for classical theism, predicated more-or-less entirely on the ministry of Jesus:

1.       If Jesus told the truth, then the Heavenly Father described by Jesus exists

2.       Jesus did tell the truth

3.       :. God exists

He goes on to claim that we can support premise #2 from the evidences of Jesus’ resurrection.

 Dr. John George outlines a few arguments against theism, including the argument from evil (alas! – in deductive form), an unusual argument about the psychological origins of hell, an argument about the futility of prayer, and a few miscellaneous remarks on the Ten Commandments.

After the opening statements, we’ve heard rather little in the way of well-supported arguments from either side, but then again, the opening statements were only ten minutes apiece.  In the rebuttal period, Dr. Miller leads with the argument from the missing body, which he dubs the “great corpus delecti” case of history.  He then goes on a bit about the dramatic transformation of Jesus’ disciples after his death.

Price vs. Boyd in Los Angeles, CA

This debate centered around the discoverability and nature of the historical Jesus.  I’ll not summarize here, since Peter Kirby took copious and detailed notes which he made available online.  I will note, though, that this was one of the better debates I’ve heard on this particular topic, since both debaters were well-versed in the subject and managed to dig deep during the rebuttal periods, coming up with all manner of obscure facts and counterexamples which one does not usually hear in these sorts of events. 

Kudos to both debaters for remaining civil and focusing on the arguments at hand.  Definitely worth a listen or two.

Overall rating: 4.5 stars

[April 23, 2003]

 

 

 

Price vs. Craig in Columbus, OH

It is striking how much Craig’s modus operandi has gone unchanged for at least a decade or so. In this debate he makes his usual arguments (alleged facts established by scholarly consensus) while Price makes a few unusual ones.  Price mostly goes after Craig’s methodology, pointing out that it is impossible to do anything like objective scholarship if you start with one’s emotional commitment to Jesus as Christ and then work backwards to prove up the death, burial, empty tomb, and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Towards the end, Price has a go at the hypothesis that the Markan narrative is cut from whole cloth, woven together from the threads of Pagan and Hebrew mythology.

Overall, Craig definitely comes off stronger, if only because he puts forth about two or three times as many historically substantive arguments (as opposed to methodological criticism bordering on circumstantial ad hominem). However, Craig also poisons the well a bit against Price, preemptively discrediting him as an unscholarly crank (as Craig also did against Carrier). Against this attack, Price makes a memorable comeback which I’ll not relate here.

I’ve no doubt that Price could have made a much stronger case against the historical reliability of the gospels, but he did not focus on making that case here. Also, he got slammed pretty hard during Q & A and had relatively little time to respond, although “Hey, it’s Jesus, take a whiff!” was memorably zingy. Overall, I found this event mildly disappointing, mostly because I expected Price to make a much stronger affirmative case in favor of historical skepticism.

• Unbeliever rating: 2.5 stars
  
  
• Believer rating: 3.5 stars
  
  
• Overall rating: 3.0 stars

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