Heard the debate to the end now. One thing became obvious during that most revealing part of any debate - the open questions at the end. Harris, who had spoken with spontaneity and sincerity throughout his allotted time periods, continued in exactly the same vein when responding to questions. Craig, no longer supported by his carefully rehearsed, set-piece speeches, came across like the proverbial fish out of water. A lady questioner pinned him down neatly and brilliantly, extending his analogy of light as an idea long described but only recently understood. The questioner suggested that light was once ascribed to a supernatural creator, and later its true nature became known. Perhaps, she offered, the same might be true of morality in our own future? Craig affected not to understand the question. When the moderator summarised it for him, he resorted to simple repetition of his analogy, and had the temerity to suggest that the questioner had misunderstood it. I believe that he knows that she did not misunderstand it.
Harris hit the nail on the head when he explained psychopathy in the sense of blindly receiving rules from an authority without distinguishing them on grounds of morality. This ranks among Harris's best taken points during the debate.
Another questioner pointed out that Craig's arguments are based on nothing, and Craig simply diverted his response onto repetitive definition of the terms ontological and epistemological. He also ducked the question about homosexuality, resorting to an ad hominem dismissal of the questioner on the grounds of insincerity. Oh, the irony.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
More on Craig v Harris
I've heard more of it now. Craig repeats his assertion that he is not arguing for the existence of God, but then goes on to assert that moral rectitude comes from God because the difference between moral good and bad cannot come about without a lawgiver. If he's not arguing for the existence of God, then he must be simply assuming the existence of God, or whence his lawgiver? To try to divorce the debate from the issue of God's existence is a slippery act of intellectual dishonesty.
Craig attacks Harris for irrelevancy, yet he (Craig) holds forth at length on the distinction between ontology and semantics, an issue with little relevance to the question under discussion, and a blatant attempt to impress by obfuscation, blinding his audience with philosophical pseudo-intellectual rot. As it happens, Harris's argument was sharply relevant to the debate, since he was demonstrating how morality can arise without God.
Craig's assertions are baseless, and go largely unchallenged in public only because they are about Christianity and religion in general, a topic which still unfortunately carries its own free gate pass. If he were making similar baseless assertions on another subject, such as crackpot 9/11 conspiracy theories, he would be laughed off the stage or required to produce evidence.
Harris is right to label Yahweh a psychopath, and to imply that his followers and promoters are psychopathic sympathisers. Yes, that includes all the paragons of virtue among the august assemblage of dignitaries at Notre Dame, and all who defend such a perverse, archaic world view as that propounded by Craig and his kind. Craig can play the 'insulted' card if he wants but he has asked for all the insults he gets.
Craig attacks Harris for irrelevancy, yet he (Craig) holds forth at length on the distinction between ontology and semantics, an issue with little relevance to the question under discussion, and a blatant attempt to impress by obfuscation, blinding his audience with philosophical pseudo-intellectual rot. As it happens, Harris's argument was sharply relevant to the debate, since he was demonstrating how morality can arise without God.
Craig's assertions are baseless, and go largely unchallenged in public only because they are about Christianity and religion in general, a topic which still unfortunately carries its own free gate pass. If he were making similar baseless assertions on another subject, such as crackpot 9/11 conspiracy theories, he would be laughed off the stage or required to produce evidence.
Harris is right to label Yahweh a psychopath, and to imply that his followers and promoters are psychopathic sympathisers. Yes, that includes all the paragons of virtue among the august assemblage of dignitaries at Notre Dame, and all who defend such a perverse, archaic world view as that propounded by Craig and his kind. Craig can play the 'insulted' card if he wants but he has asked for all the insults he gets.
Friday, April 8, 2011
William Lane Craig's opening remarks in his debate with Sam Harris on 7 April 2011
So far I've listened only to Craig's 20-minute speech but I want to comment while it's fresh in my mind. I'll listen to the rest of the two-hour program later.
Craig's opener was largely centred around his old claim that there would be no objective moral values without an absolute authority to provide them. That authority, he assumes and asserts, is God.
My problem with objective moral values - i.e., moral rights and wrongs that are independent of human minds - is that we have only the human mind with which to consider them. Craig seems to think we can observe and comment on things that are outside our minds, but in doing so he awards himself a kind of omniscience. Consider an example. You come upon a man in the act of cutting off a child's finger with a penknife. The child screams in pain and shock. Surely there can be no doubt that the man's action is wrong. But then we learn that the child had just been bitten by a venomous snake, and the man with the knife is a reptile expert who knows that the only way to save the child's life, in the absence of antivenom, is to amputate the bitten extremity as quickly as possible. He judges that the pain, risk of infection, and permanent mutilation are a better option than certain death, which is the only alternative. Please note that I am not defending cruelty to children here. My point is that in order to judge the man's actions as moral or otherwise, we need to know everything about his actions.
No doubt a theist would respond to this in two ways. Firstly, God knows everything, so he knows that the man's actions are not morally wrong. Secondly, the concepts of moral rightness and wrongness exist, and that in itself needs to be explained.
Both these responses are hogwash. The first is easily dismissed, for it is asserted without reason or evidence. The second is slightly more interesting, but disappears when it becomes apparent that the idea of moral rectitude comes from human responses to perceived situations.
If, as in the real world, our information is necessarily limited, then the best we can do is to make judgements based on what we have. Obviously those judgements will be affected by our preconceptions. If we have a preconception that people are more valuable than non-human animals, then we can expect to be biased accordingly. Such a bias may prick our conscience less if we can dump the responsibility for it onto an all-powerful, invisible absolute authority who just says it has to be that way.
To my mind there is nothing remotely moral about an all-powerful being who demands that his subordinates must love him with all their souls. This is the proclamation of a despotic tyrant, not a loving father. Besides, love which has to be commanded is worth little, as it is not genuine.
Echoing Pierre-Simon Laplace's remarks to Napoleon, we have no need of the God hypothesis to explain the human capacity to act morally toward other sentient creatures. Moreover, if God does exist in omnipotent form, we have every need for him to account for the plentiful immorality by which we are surrounded.
Craig's opener was largely centred around his old claim that there would be no objective moral values without an absolute authority to provide them. That authority, he assumes and asserts, is God.
My problem with objective moral values - i.e., moral rights and wrongs that are independent of human minds - is that we have only the human mind with which to consider them. Craig seems to think we can observe and comment on things that are outside our minds, but in doing so he awards himself a kind of omniscience. Consider an example. You come upon a man in the act of cutting off a child's finger with a penknife. The child screams in pain and shock. Surely there can be no doubt that the man's action is wrong. But then we learn that the child had just been bitten by a venomous snake, and the man with the knife is a reptile expert who knows that the only way to save the child's life, in the absence of antivenom, is to amputate the bitten extremity as quickly as possible. He judges that the pain, risk of infection, and permanent mutilation are a better option than certain death, which is the only alternative. Please note that I am not defending cruelty to children here. My point is that in order to judge the man's actions as moral or otherwise, we need to know everything about his actions.
No doubt a theist would respond to this in two ways. Firstly, God knows everything, so he knows that the man's actions are not morally wrong. Secondly, the concepts of moral rightness and wrongness exist, and that in itself needs to be explained.
Both these responses are hogwash. The first is easily dismissed, for it is asserted without reason or evidence. The second is slightly more interesting, but disappears when it becomes apparent that the idea of moral rectitude comes from human responses to perceived situations.
If, as in the real world, our information is necessarily limited, then the best we can do is to make judgements based on what we have. Obviously those judgements will be affected by our preconceptions. If we have a preconception that people are more valuable than non-human animals, then we can expect to be biased accordingly. Such a bias may prick our conscience less if we can dump the responsibility for it onto an all-powerful, invisible absolute authority who just says it has to be that way.
To my mind there is nothing remotely moral about an all-powerful being who demands that his subordinates must love him with all their souls. This is the proclamation of a despotic tyrant, not a loving father. Besides, love which has to be commanded is worth little, as it is not genuine.
Echoing Pierre-Simon Laplace's remarks to Napoleon, we have no need of the God hypothesis to explain the human capacity to act morally toward other sentient creatures. Moreover, if God does exist in omnipotent form, we have every need for him to account for the plentiful immorality by which we are surrounded.
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