Does Humanism require God? (Doesn't everything?)

Today's Unbelievable? — scheduled to broadcast at 14:30 this afternoon — has already been downloaded by my podcatcher. It's a discussion between Angus Ritchie, co-author of a recent Theos paper on humanism, and Stephen Law, Provost of the Centre for Inquiry UK, who has critiqued the paper on the CfI blog. I listened to the show yesterday evening and posted the following comments in the Skepticule aka The Three Pauls Podcast Facebook group while listening:

Paul S Jenkins Listening now. Trying to resist the temptation to cheer on Stephen Law's points.
13 hrs · Like

Paul S Jenkins Angus Ritchie's reasoning is tied up with "intrinsic values". This is absolutism, and that's why it won't fly as a reasoned argument.
12 hrs · Like

Paul S Jenkins Stephen Law has just asked Angus Ritchie a serious and extreme question. Angus has not yet answered it.
12 hrs · Like

Paul S Jenkins Damn. Justin has moved the argument on, giving Angus a breather.
12 hrs · Like

Paul S Jenkins Now Angus is obliquely referencing Plantinga's EAAN.
12 hrs · Like

Paul S Jenkins Justin reminds us that Stephen Law debated Alvin Plantinga on a previous _Unbelievable?_
12 hrs · Edited · Like

Paul S Jenkins Justin is paraphrasing Angus's argument, and diluting it at the same time.
12 hrs · Like

Paul S Jenkins "If nothing ethically matters, it doesn't matter that nothing ethically matters." Brilliant. An excellent performance by our favourite Scruffy Philosopher.
12 hrs · Like

Worth a listen if you have views on humanism and what it entails (and what it doesn't).

(At the end of the show, host Justin Brierley read out some feedback on a previous one in which William Lane Craig apparently claimed that the existence of mathematics was evidence for the existence of God. For me, Norman Bacrac's feedback hit the nail on the head by stating that mathematics is a property of physical reality. I don't think I'll be listening to that one.)

Heavenly confirmation bias

Here's a video^[1] of an Intelligence Squared^[2] debate, on the motion that "Death is Not Final". The Three Pauls talked briefly about this on Skepticule episode 73^[3], but I'm using this blogpost to set down a slightly more detailed account of my reactions to how the debate proceeded.

http://youtu.be/h0YtL5eiBYw


Eben Alexander^[4] is a neurosurgeon who claims to have seen Heaven during a near-death experience (NDE) while under the knife on the operating table. He wrote a book about it, Proof of Heaven^[5], using his credentials as a man of medical science to persuade the general public to take him on his word that he knows there is an afterlife because he was given a tour of the place. The book is a bestseller.

Supporting Alexander was Raymond Moody^[6], who apparently coined the phrase "near-death experience"^[7], but apart from that I don't think he contributed much of substance to the discussion. Indeed he seemed to be on another (astral?) plane altogether.

Opposing Alexander and Moody were Sean Carroll^[8] and Steven Novella^[9], who argued that, yes, death is final. Sean Carroll is a cosmologist and a good debater — as we saw recently^[10] when he took on Christian apologist William Lane Craig^[11], refuting Craig's arguments with ease and not a little aplomb. Steven Novella is a neurologist and another accomplished debater, so he was a particularly good choice to be put up against the afterlife proponents. I should point out here that though Alexander has made much of his credentials as a neurosurgeon, as far as I'm aware this is not the same as a neurologist (which is what Novella is). The difference between neurology and neurosurgery can probably be likened to that between fluid dynamics and plumbing, or between botany and gardening.

As is usual with Intelligence Squared, the debate format was semi-formal with a moderator, and an audience-vote before the debate and another afterwards. All four participants made opening statements, then there were rebuttals and questions. Alexander read his opening statement somewhat stiffly, whereas Carroll and Novella spoke extempore directly to the audience without notes. Moody, it seemed to me, just waffled.

Alexander and Moody took the position that consciousness is complicated and not understood, and therefore it might have a component that is separate from the brain. Moody was unhelpfully speculative on this point, while Alexander claimed to have proved it. Carroll and Novella on the other hand maintained that there is no evidence for consciousness existing apart from the brain, and that consciousness — and anything we describe as "mind" — is inextricably linked to the brain. Novella's phrase for this was: "The mind is what the brain does." Though consciousness is at present unexplained, much research is now under way, and the current lack of a full explanation is no justification for unevidenced claims for conciousness being mind-independent.

Alexander claimed that his tour through the afterlife took place when his brain was incapable of registering anything, but as Novella pointed out, he cannot know this. We don't know what time it is when we dream. As I see it, there's an even deeper flaw with Alexander's claim, which to me is so obvious I wonder how NDE's can ever be taken as evidence for anything other than being "near death". If Alexander's brain was all but completely non-functioning, how can he trust anything he perceived during that period?

By way of analogy, imagine this scenario. At a notoriously dangerous intersection a horrific traffic accident takes place, involving several vehicles, and everyone involved is killed. When the authorities arrive on the scene they find that one of the cars is relatively new, and so they decide to interrogate the engine management system (EMS) using standard computerised diagnostic tools. Though the car is a write-off, the electronics appear to be still partly functioning. The EMS is able to respond to the diagnostic tools, reporting that the vehicle is now — at the very moment the tools are probing — travelling at 90 miles per hour without consuming a drop of fuel. What does this indicate? Does it indicate that despite appearances (a crushed car incapable of motion) the vehicle is in fact moving very fast with impossibly low fuel consumption? Of course not — it indicates that the EMS is damaged, and its reports cannot be trusted.

This debate was a splendid example of confirmation bias. The idea of life after death is so attractive, some people will ignore the counter-evidence no matter how obvious it appears. Even after Novella had clearly stated that there were no reliably documented cases of NDEs and out-of-body experiences that produced information that could not have been obtained any other way, Alexander went on to state that there were too many cases that couldn't be explained — though he provided no citations for these.

Alexander further illustrated his confirmation bias (I'll assume that's what it was, rather than impute nefarious motives) when he stated that Carl Sagan^[12] wrote in The Demon-Haunted World^[13] that he was open to the possibility of consciousness independent of the brain — he even quoted the page number. Alexander was either naïve or mistaken, because while Novella could only splutter in astonishment that Sagan would never have said anything of the sort, several of those watching the debate's live stream simply looked up the page, photographed it, and posted the image on Twitter with the relevant hashtag during the debate — thus giving the lie to Alexander's rash claim.

At one point Alexander challenged the other side to provide a one-sentence explanation of consciousness, knowing of course that there currently isn't one. Novella stated again that there was ongoing research, but as Jonathan MS Pearce^[14] has pointed out^[15], he missed the chance to demand a one-sentence explanation of God. Despite this, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the after-debate vote confirmed that the motion "Death is Not Final" had been comfortably defeated.

Is Alexander's insistence that he has "proof of Heaven" based on anything more than confirmation bias? His stance seems so obviously flawed that I'm left wondering if there aren't some effects of brain-damage hanging around after his near-death experience. That's the kinder interpretation. Another interpretation, less kind, might be that a neurosurgeon's salary could be considered a pittance in comparison to royalties from a bestselling book.

---

Links:

1. YouTube: Death is Not Final — http://youtu.be/h0YtL5eiBYw
2. Intelligence² — http://www.intelligencesquared.com/
3. Skepticule 073 — http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2014/05/skepticule-073-20140519.html
4. Eben Alexander — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Alexander_%28author%29
5. Proof of Heaven — http://www.amazon.co.uk/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife-ebook/dp/B008TTPQXA
6. Raymond Moody — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Moody
7. Near-Death Experience — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience
8. Sean Carroll — http://preposterousuniverse.com/
9. Steven Novella — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Novella
10. YouTube: God & Cosmology — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07QUPuZg05I
11. William Lane Craig — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lane_Craig
12. Carl Sagan — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
13. The Demon-Haunted World — http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Demon-haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/1439505284
14. Jonathan M. S. Pearce — http://www.skepticink.com/tippling
15. "Carroll & Novella vs Alexander & Moody. Some terrible, terrible arguments" — http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2014/05/09/carroll-novella-vs-alexander-moody-some-terrible-terrible-arguments/

Krauss and Craig in Australia

When I heard that Lawrence Krauss was going to debate William Lane Craig again, I was confused. Why would Krauss agree to this, given what happened last time?

Anyway, the videos of the three sessions are now available, so I decided to watch them. Unbelievable? also featured Krauss and Craig, subsequent to the debates, but I decided to postpone listening to the programme until I had seen all three debates. I had misgivings about Unbelievable? having Craig on, as host Justin Brierley has in the past given Craig an unopposed platform to badmouth his debating opponent. At least this time Krauss was, I assumed, giving his side of the encounters.

http://youtu.be/-b8t70_c8eE


As for the debates, I began with the first one, in Brisbane. Krauss spoke first — the format was to be an opening statement from each participant, then a moderated discussion, followed by Q&A. Not long after Krauss began, I thought I got a sense of why he had agreed to participate. It seemed it was payback time, with Krauss calling out Craig for his dishonest tactics (even though — this being the first debate of three, and this the opening statement from the first participant — we hadn't yet heard anything from Craig).

The topic was "Has Science Buried God?" — Krauss said yes, science has buried gods, plural, and gave reasons, but he also attacked Craig for misrepresentation of science, and for lying about the Dawkins and Krauss film, The Unbelievers.

In Craig's opening statement he made the odd claim that theology provides the foundation for science. He put up a slide listing "Assumptions Undergirding Science". Among these were laws of logic, the orderly structure of the physical world, the reliability of our cognitive faculties in knowing the world, and the validity of inductive reasoning. This is thinly disguised presuppositionalism. Anyone who has had dealings with presuppositional apologetics will recognise it immediately. But the fact that Craig was using a presuppositional argument to support his claim that science has not buried God lends credence to Krauss's contention that Craig is being dishonest. In Five Views on Apologetics, edited by Steven Cowan, Craig wrote:

Where presuppositionalism muddies the waters is in its apologetic methodology. As commonly understood, presuppositionalism is guilty of a logical howler: it commits the informal fallacy of “petitio principii,” or begging the question, for its advocates presuppose the truth of Christian theism in order to prove Christian theism.

So Craig is on record as decrying presuppositionalism as not a useful apologetic — and here we have him using it when it suits him. In a debate, it appears, Craig will use whatever will fit his current purpose, no matter if he believes it's true, or if it's already been refuted a thousand times. If it will help him "win" a debate, then it's all dubious theological grist to his apologetic mill. To those who have heard Craig debate a few times, this will not be a surprise.

As if to illustrate his pragmatic debating ethos, Craig offered a quote from Stephen Hawking: "Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang." Aside from the neutrality of the quote — Hawking appears to be stating what he thinks others believe — it seems like a gratuitous and selective appeal to authority, as Craig has previously described Hawking's explanation of the beginning of the universe in The Grand Design as "metaphysically absurd".

As part of Craig's thesis that science has not buried God, he claimed that the big bang theory — that the universe had a beginning — is an example of how science verifies theological claims. He cited Borde, Guth & Vilenkin in this endeavour, as they apparently show that all models of the beginning of the "universe" — whether that's our own universe or any number of other universes in a multiverse — cannot be "past eternal". That is, the universe must have had an absolute beginning. Well, that's what the Bible says! QED! What the implications of the Borde Guth Vilenkin Theorem actually are in respect of the finiteness or otherwise of the universe became a recurring theme in this series of debates — but not, generally, in a good way.

Craig's version of cosmology has always seemed to me — a non-cosmologist — overly simplistic. The beginning of the universe entails the beginning of time as well as the beginning of space, which Craig acknowledges, but he conveniently ignores the problem of causation without time. Without time, cause and effect have no meaning, so to say that anything that has a beginning (including space-time) must have a cause, is to talk nonsense. So, the universe had a beginning. Why? It's impossible to know. Craig, however, thinks otherwise, using what he called the Contingency Argument:

1. Every existing thing has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause).
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe is an existing thing.
4. Therefore the explanation of the existence of the universe is God.

Apart from the obvious tautology, this argument (originally from Leibniz) has serious flaws right from the start. In the first premise there is the suggestion that something that is necessarily existent is somehow explained by that necessity. But where's the explanation in saying something exists just because it must? The reason that this kind of "logic" is acceptable to theists is that it's what they use to justify God. God exists because he must. Then there's the matter of an external cause. It sounds reasonable, but if you're applying this argument to the existence of the universe the only way it works is if the definition of "universe" is such that it has something external to it. If that's what Craig means, then this argument is of no use because it's not doing what he wants, which is to explain the existence of the Universe with a capital U — the universe that includes everything and therefore by definition it's a universe with nothing external to it.

But the second premise is surely the ultimate hubris: "If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God." This isn't a premise, it's a conclusion. That Craig can put up a slide like this with a straight face is simply astonishing.

Naturally Krauss and Craig both argued about the nature of "nothing", and it was here more than anywhere else in their debates that they consistently talked past each other. Krauss talked about "nothing" as a quantum vacuum, in which particles can spontaneously pop into and out of existence. Craig maintained, rightly, that because the quantum vacuum contains energy fields it isn't nothing. What Craig means by nothing is the philosophical nothing, the nothing-at-all, anywhere, anywhen. And what he's asking is why is there something — anything at all — rather than a state of absolute nonbeing.

But such a "why question" really is — as Richard Dawkins would say — a silly question. It's clear from the outset that this state of absolute nonbeing is not an option. It's not "one of a number of possibilities" — it's the total absence of possibilities. Indeed it's the total absence of anything, and as such it's not even worth talking about. It seems to me that a state of absolute nonbeing is no more than a philosophical concept, and I see no reason to even consider that such a state was ever the case. To ask "Why is there something rather nothing?" is to suggest in the question that "something" and "nothing" are somehow equivalent to each other, as if they are two sides of the same coin — and in Krauss's view they are, if "nothing" is taken to mean empty space. As a cosmologist he directs his efforts to that question, and the physics he talks about is addressing the question of why do we have a universe of galaxies, stars and planets rather than empty space. Craig says that's not the question being asked. But the question, "Why is there something rather than a state of absolute nonbeing?" is nonsensical, because these two are not equivalent. It's like asking "Why is there political intrigue rather than glass-fibre loft-insulation?"

http://youtu.be/V82uGzgoajI


The second debate, in Sydney, was supposed to address this question directly. Krauss delivered a very condensed version of his "A Universe from Nothing" lecture, and showed a slide of an email he had received from Alex Vilenkin which in effect stated that it may be erroneous to state that no valid theory of the beginning of the universe could legitimately posit a past-eternal universe. Krauss also picked up on Craig's use of unsound premises in his Contingency Argument for the existence of God.

When it was Craig's turn he began by clarifying what he meant by "nothing", but as I've already explained, the nothing that is not anything at all is an uninteresting philosophical concept of no practical use, no likelihood of being a description of an actual state, and therefore in my opinion not worth discussing. When certain philosophers say that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is one of the most crucial questions that can be asked, I beg to differ.

Craig reiterated the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument, claiming that the cause of the universe must be a non-physical immaterial being beyond space and time. There are multiple problems with this assertion. Why must the cause be a "being"? Do we have any examples of non-physical immaterial entities causing anything in the real world? If such an entity is "beyond space and time" how can it have an effect on anything in the real world (which is of course within space and time)? Finally, what does "beyond space and time" even mean, when applied to causative agents? Craig was just using big words to disguise the lack of evidence for his preferred "explanation". Despite what he claimed in the first debate he really was using a "God of the gaps" argument, but dressed up in fancy language.

http://youtu.be/7xcgjtps5ks


By the third debate (Melbourne) I still had no real understanding why Krauss would want to engage with Craig, other than to settle a few scores. Craig began with his usual redefinition of the topic, from "Is it reasonable to believe there is a God?" to "Are there better arguments for God's existence than against God's existence?" This might seem innocuous, but notice the subtle shift in the burden of proof. From having to provide reasons for belief in God — reasons that are compelling enough to show that such belief is reasonable — Craig now only has to provide some arguments for God's existence in opposition to arguments against. His opponent, however, now has to provide better arguments to prove a negative.

Craig used six arguments to show why, in his opinion, it is reasonable to believe there is a God: the Kalām Cosmological Argument; Mathematics; Fine Tuning; Objective Morality; the Resurrection of Jesus; and the Personal Experience of God. We've heard these countless times, and I don't intend to go into them here. Suffice to say, I don't buy any of them.

The debate degenerated into petty arguments about whether Craig really had misinterpreted the Borde Guth Vilenkin Theorem, as Krauss claimed. Craig had obtained a copy of the email that Alex Vilenkin had sent to Krauss, and which Krauss had shown in an edited form. Craig claimed that Krauss had edited out sections favourable to Craig's argument. Krauss denied this. Subsequent to the debates Craig's supporters were citing this as hypocrisy on Krauss's part — Krauss being dishonest while claiming Craig was dishonest. And subsequent to that, Krauss published a joint open email from himself and Vilenkin showing their agreement that Krauss's edited version of Vilenkin's email did not distort its meaning. Petty and distracting, and in my opinion a further indication that Krauss should not have bothered with these debates. Particularly in this last one there were extended moments when Krauss came over as cantankerous, dismissive and constantly interrupting. By the end I still didn't know why he agreed to participate. Perhaps the City Bible Forum offered him lots of money.

http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={AD764830-833C-49A1-B997-D67F1B3E2D10}

When I did get around to listening to the relevant Unbelievable? podcast, I heard Krauss give his reasons for engaging with Craig. Firstly to explain how science works, and secondly:

The other thing that I try and do is counter misrepresentations, not only about science, but about nature, by people who have vested interests, and in this case I agreed to do these because having had interactions with William Lane Craig before, it was clear to me that he misrepresents science completely, in order to try and provide justification for beliefs he has that are just his beliefs, yet he presents them as if with the authority of science, which he certainly — demonstrated in these dialogues and in other cases — he certainly doesn't understand. And I felt it was really important to attack that credibility for people of goodwill who don't know, and they listen and they think "well, when this man is quoting scientists, or he's quoting science, he's doing it accurately" and I tried to show, especially in the first discussion, there's very little accuracy there whatsoever.

Host Justin Brierley interviewed Krauss and Craig separately on his show — though it's not clear whether each interviewee heard what the other said until after the whole programme was recorded. My guess is that they didn't. Frankly the whole thing was pretty tedious, with accusations flying in both directions. Nevertheless Craig still got the last word, characterising Krauss as "incapable of carrying on a civil conversation." As it happens I've met Lawrence Krauss on two separate occasions and he was perfectly charming both times, but the impression left by these debates and the Unbelievable? programme is one of cantankerous belligerence with a score to settle. Craig, on the other hand — in the debates at least, if not on Unbelievable? — came over as patient and forbearing.

It's a shame, because Lawrence Krauss is right, and William Lane Craig is wrong.

My Kalām Krash

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The Universe began to exist.
3. Therefore the Universe has a cause of its existence.

This is the Kalām Cosmological Argument for the existence of God — the favourite argument of William Lane Craig. It boils down to "The Universe had to be created by something, ergo, God." The KCA is also related to the argument that out of nothing, nothing comes. So let's look at the KCA a bit more (don't worry, this won't take long, and it doesn't involve any multiverses).

The current cosmological consensus is that the Universe began with the Big Bang, at which both space and time came into being. The essential part of the KCA is the notion of "cause". We know that causes always come before effects, because if cause and effect are simultaneous it's impossible to distinguish between the two. To put this another way, both the cause and the effect, if simultaneous, can be said to have come about spontaneously.

The notion of "before" is dependent on the notion of "time". At the Big Bang there was no time, therefore the common understanding of cause and effect cannot hold. Where the traditional relationship between cause and effect does not apply, the claim that effects depend on causes is no longer supportable. One cannot, therefore, rule out the possibility of the Big Bang arising from nothing, spontaneously — without a cause.

The first premise of the KCA needs to be revised:

1. Everything that begins to exist (except the Universe) has a cause of its existence.

Fixed.

Who needs truth when you have apologetics?

Last week's Unbelievable? aired a talk given by Premier Radio's favourite Christian apologist William Lane Craig, at the 2011 Bethinking conference as part of the Reasonable Faith Tour of the UK.

I understand that this talk was given to Christians, so I was concerned to hear Craig begin by misrepresenting the meaning of secularism. In fact he seemed to base his whole talk on an incorrect premise: that the "secularisation" of Britain was a bad thing because it was based in a naturalistic philosophy that denies God. But secularism is merely the idea that matters of religious belief should be independent of government (and vice versa) — and as such is as beneficial to those who hold religious beliefs as it is to those who don't.

Later on — in what might be classed as an appeal to non-authority — Craig quoted Satan, further damning any credibility he might have otherwise retained in my view. Perhaps he just doesn't see how risible his arguments sound when he plumbs such depths; he seems happy enough blowing his own trumpet about how easily he can fill a hall with an audience. Sure, he's preaching to the converted and trying to inspire them, and I appreciate that a little hyperbole can go a long way.

But Craig shouldn't be let off the hook for playing fast and loose with facts. He describes the Crucifixion as the one historical fact about Jesus of Nazareth that is universally acknowledged among historical critical scholars. This is of course true, so long as your definition of "historical critical scholars" includes only those who acknowledge the Crucifixion as a historical fact.

Craig also seems very fond of referring to "The Church" as if it were a single homogenous entity, when we all know that this couldn't be further from the truth. During the Q & A he was asked about evangelising to Darwinists and postmodernists, and he advised skirting around such issues:

My evangelistic strategy is to set the bar as low as you can; make it as easy as possible to become a Christian. There are very few things you need to believe to be a Christian: you've got to believe that God exists, that Jesus Christ is divine, that he died for your sins and rose from the dead, and that you will be saved by grace, through placing your faith in his atoning death — and really that's about it, you know?

Huh? Is that all?

The final question was about Christ being the "second Adam", and how this could be true if Adam didn't actually exist as a real person. Craig said he affirmed the historical Adam, but for those who don't, the phrase "second Adam" would be purely symbolic. For me, this lackadaisical attitude to facts exemplifies so much of Christian apologetics, and is why I find it utterly unconvincing.

Last year's Law/Craig Evil God Debate — full video

Last year I went to the debate between Stephen Law and William Lane Craig. Though the audio of the whole thing was made available for streaming and download (and still is) the day after, it's taken a while for the video version to surface. But here it is, along with a promo or "taster":

http://youtu.be/9yytiT9h8TQ


http://youtu.be/w7FhphWDokA


There's plenty of debate about the Debate too, by both participants and others — just Google "Craig/Law debate" for a profusion of links.

The three Pauls discussed the debate on Skepticule Extra 16, available here:
http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/11/skepextra-016-20111030.html

Moral argument for the existence of tedium

The moral argument for the existence of God is in my opinion so completely wrong, so groundless and so obviously flawed, that I find it astonishing anyone takes it seriously. And when I come across a screed that proposes the moral argument without a shred of embarrassment, I can only shake my head and move on. One such screed is this, by Jonathan McLatchie. I've looked at it, shaken my head and moved on from it more than once, but there remains a nagging concern that though its falsehood is plain to me, some people still — amazingly — take the argument seriously.

It's all very well for me to assert that the arguments put forth in this piece are spent and vacuous, but it seems there are some people to whom this is not apparent. Therefore, despite the tedium involved (and despite having done it before), I must perforce demonstrate why the argument so spectacularly fails.

Moral Argument – Overview
The moral argument for the existence of God refers to the claim that God is needed to provide a coherent ontological foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties. The argument can be summarised in the following syllogism:

Premise 1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Premise 2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

Since this is a logically valid syllogism, the atheist, in order to maintain his non-belief in God, must reject at least one of the two Premises. By “objective” morality we mean a system of ethics which universally pertains irrespective of the opinions or tastes of human persons: for example, the holocaust was morally wrong irrespective of what Hitler and the Nazis believed about it, and it would have remained morally wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and compelled everyone into compliance with their values. This view, known in philosophy as “moral realism,” contrasts with “moral relativism” which maintains that no-one is objectively correct or incorrect with respect to their moral values and judgements.

This doesn't work at all. For a start it isn't a logically valid syllogism, because there's more than one definition of objective. McLatchie (like William Lane Craig) seems to be using a definition that requires objective moral values to mean God-given moral values — which of course is begging the question. His definition above is too vague: "a system of ethics which universally pertains irrespective of the opinions or tastes of human persons" and it craftily slips in the idea of universality being a necessary part of what it is to be objective.  But objective is simply the opposite of subjective, that is, independent of any single individual. This does not rule out objective moral values that are formulated jointly, after consideration of the consequences of moral actions. Nor does it rule out objective moral values that can change according to circumstances. Right at the start, therefore, Premise 1 fails.

Moreover, in the absence of theism, nobody has been able to conceive of a defensible grounding for moral values.

This always makes me laugh, because it implies that theism can provide "a defensible grounding for moral values." No theist can justify this, only merely assert it. Where do theists get their moral grounding? It's in a book — a book that no present-day theists had a hand in writing, that has no demonstrably sound provenance, and that contains "moral guidance" even theists admit — by their textual wrangling to make things fit — is of dubious moral value. When it comes to making moral decisions, I submit that ignoring circumstances and consequences in favour of "playing by the book" is an abdication of moral responsibility.

Moral Argument – An Important Distinction
It is important to bear in mind that the moral argument pertains to the ultimate source of objective moral values and duties (moral ontology) and not how we know what is moral or immoral (moral epistemology) and not 'what we mean' by good/bad or right/wrong (moral semantics). The theistic ethicist maintains that moral values are grounded in the character and nature of God. 

This doesn't work either. McLatchie has not established that there is, or needs to be, an "ultimate source of objective moral values and duties". In referring to moral ontology McLatchie is claiming that objective moral values and duties have some kind of existence in reality, independent of anything else. He hasn't established this, he's just assuming it.

There follows a fairly straight exposition of the Euthyphro dilemma, with this addendum:

The question is posed this way: Is x the right thing to do because God commands it, or does God command it because it is already the right thing to do? I take the former option. Normally, the problem with accepting the horn is that there is a presumption that the commands in question from God are arbitrary (i.e. God could have commanded that we ought to lie). But that's just false. The theist wants to say that God is essentially loving, honest etc., and therefore, in all worlds at which God exists, his commands are going to be consistent with his nature. And therefore, in all worlds, he will disapprove of lying.

Theists may indeed want to say that God is essentially loving, honest etc., but unfortunately they have no justification for saying it, other than to define God in this way. "It's God's nature," they say. But is God's nature essentially loving, honest etc., because it is God's? Or is God essentially loving, honest etc., because he is beholden to his nature? In answer, theists will eventually say that God and his nature are one and the same thing, which kind of makes the whole thing circular: God is good because good is God, and vice versa — unhelpful at best.

Moral Argument – The Shortcomings of Utilitarianism

There are various nontheistic systems of ethics, none of which succeed in providing a robust ontological foundation or objective moral values and duties. One of these systems, popularised recently by Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape, is called utilitarianism, and (in its most common formulation) refers to the view that ethics are determined by what constitutes the greatest happiness for the greatest number. One difficulty lies in the fact that it attempts to balance two different scales employed to assess the moral virtue of an action (i.e. the amount of utility produced and the number of people affected). This can often lead to conflicting answers—in some cases an activity might be considered better for a greater number of individuals whereas a different activity might create a greater overall utility. Utilitarians try to maximize with their actions the utility of the long-term consequences of those actions. However, short of possession of omniscience, it is impossible to evaluate the respective long-term results of different activities. Utilitarianism also does not take into account the individual’s intent—Activity X could be done sincerely by an individual who believes that what he is doing will create the maximum utility. But if activity X turns out in the long-term not to produce the desired utility, then his action, under the philosophy of utilitarianism, would be considered less moral than an activity that created more utility.

Yeah, this stuff is hard, in case you hadn't noticed. So much easier to look it up in a book, and disregard any subsequent ramifications. Personally I'd rather entrust moral decisions to people who have carefully considered the circumstances and consequences of those decisions, than entrust them to a bunch of Christians with a crib-sheet.

Moral Argument – Conclusion
In conclusion, the moral argument is a robust argument for the existence of God.

Actually it's not.

Humans, being shaped in the image of God, have an intuitive sense of right and wrong.

Christians like to say that humans are "shaped in the image of God," but this is one of those meaningless phrases they can never explain. And the reason why we have an intuitive sense of right and wrong is because we have an evolved conscience.

It is not at all clear how the atheist, except at the expense of moral realism, can maintain an objective standard of ethics without such a being as God as his ontological foundation.

 It's not at all clear to Jonathan McLatchie — that much is clear.

More Christian double-speak

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? featured another itch-inducing segment from William Lane Craig. I've not yet heard his Cambridge lecture (not even sure I want to), but Justin Brierley broadcast a section of the Q&A, revealing the egregious double standards of religious language that I touched on in a previous post.

In response to a question about whether God needs to be caused (at 45'15"):

...God is omnipotent, omniscient, exists self-existently, is eternal, is morally perfect, and so forth. There are many many attributes that will round out and give you a very theologically rich concept of God, but it's important to see that in Christian thinking, traditionally God isn't a contingent being — that is to say a being that just happens to exist. God doesn't just happen to exist. He's metaphysically necessary — he's a self-existent being. His non-existence is impossible.

In response to the problem of evil and suffering in the world (at 47'02"):

The atheist has to show that it's either impossible or highly improbable that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world, and we're simply not in a position to make those kind of judgements with any sort of confidence. God's morally sufficient reasons for permitting some incident of suffering in your life might not emerge until centuries later, maybe in another country, so that you would have no hope of being able to see what his morally sufficient reason is for permitting this [inaudible] your life. So it's simply impossible for us to make with any kind of confidence these sort of probability judgements when some incident of suffering occurs, that God probably lacks a morally sufficient reason for allowing that. That's sheer speculation.

Craig dismisses the problem of evil on the basis of the impossibility of knowing things about God (describing this as sheer speculation), only seconds after he has claimed all kinds of things about God that he cannot possibly know.

It's that man again — the Craig "itch"

Regular readers of this blog (and listeners to Skepticule Extra) will know that I have an oscillating attitude to William Lane Craig. No sooner have I concluded that he has nothing new to tell me and therefore I can forthwith ignore him, than I find myself irresistibly scratching at something he's said, knowing that it's wrong without being able to put my finger on precisely why. But I think Thunderf00t has nailed it:

http://youtu.be/4u6Mz21jTaA


Being a confident speaker will go a long, long way towards convincing people that what you say is true. If you behave in a way that says loudly and clearly that of course what you say is true, many people will believe you by default. But with Craig there is always that niggling doubt that his approach to his various arguments for the existence of God rests on something not just unsound but profoundly silly. This video exposes that doubt and parades it for all to see.

Miraculous irrationality

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? was a discussion between Gary Habermas, Christian, and Geoff Campos, atheist, recorded during the Bethinking apologetics conference at Westminster Chapel, as part of William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Tour. I listened with mixed feelings, as there had been a brief possibility that the three Pauls of Skepticule Extra could have been the ones in conversation with Gary Habermas, rather than Geoff Campos. In the event I think Geoff gave a good account of himself and his position with regard to the question at issue — which was, "Is it rational to believe in miracles?"

Nevertheless I found myself at times disagreeing with everyone in the conversation. A good deal was said about Geoff's stance on the status of the "supernatural", and Justin Brierley — moderating the discussion — made the inevitable point about denial of supernature closing off options, suggesting that perhaps Geoff was being closed-minded if he did not accept that supernatural events were even possible.

This is an invidious position to hold in the face of theistic miracle claims, but I think it's a result of not defining one's terms. Though the definition of "supernatural" was explored, I don't recall anyone clarifying what was meant by "rational". For an event to be rationally believed in, that event must conform to reason and logic. Its causes and effects must be capable of description in rational terms, and those causes and effects must lie entirely in the physical realm — because the physical realm of causes and effects is the only realm in which rationally observed phenomena have been verified to occur.

So the question posed by Justin for this show contained the seeds of its own irrationality. It's not rational to believe in miracles, because by definition miracles are effects without rational causes.

---

Streaming audio here:
http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={B9C493B0-276B-492F-82B7-C2C5D5F06EFA}

Download mp3 here:
http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/f4ac58fb-9cf3-4ad7-aa49-1392546b275f.mp3

The Evil God debate: William Lane Craig vs Stephen Law

Listeners to the Pod Delusion of about a month ago will have heard Premier Christian Radio host Justin Brierley promoting the Reasonable Faith Tour — a week and a half of debates and lectures throughout the UK by American philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. Much was made, then and since, of Richard Dawkins' refusal to engage William Lane Craig in a formal debate, though the fuss seems to have had more to do with promoting the tour than real regret at not having the the world's most famous living atheist on the speaking list. Clearly Dawkins could not "win", either in debate or out of it. If he accepted he would be lending his name to a religious event — which would be trumpeted far and wide — and if he declined, his refusal would be (and was) … trumpeted far and wide. Whatever he did would be (and was) used as promotional material for the Reasonable Faith Tour. (Perhaps the three Pauls should invite Richard Dawkins on to the Skepticule Extra podcast. I'm sure I've an empty chair I could put by for him.)

Until recently the promotional hoo-hah was of only peripheral interest to me, as I was heartily sick of listening to Craig's debates, especially after those with Lawrence Krauss and Sam Harris, both of whom have original things to contribute about their respective fields, but whose points Craig roundly ignored. When Polly Toynbee withdrew her name from the tour's speaking list after having initially accepted, I sympathised with what I considered a wise decision. For myself I felt I'd had enough of Craig, and I wasn't interested in attending any of the tour.

When Stephen Law "stepped up to the plate", however, I felt differently. Here was a professional philosopher, known as an atheist and clearly a deep thinker — as his previous appearances on Justin Brierley's radio programme Unbelievable? had demonstrated. Suddenly the prospect of yet another William Lane Craig debate became intriguing, as perhaps this time the Craig steamroller might have something concrete and unyielding in its path.

And that's why I found myself in Westminster Central Hall on Monday 17^th October, for the initial event of William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Tour — a debate between a Christian and an atheist on the question, "Does God exist?"

I had arrived early to secure a good seat in the magnificent and capacious building, and was in the third row. I made my own estimate of its seating capacity — about 2000 on two levels. I thought it likely that the lower level would be mostly filled, probably to about 900 (a good crowd by any standard, for an event such as this). But as 7:30 approached — and I'd witnessed the separate arrivals of William Lane Craig and Stephen Law — the upper level began to fill up too. Five minutes before the start I estimated about 1800 people were seated in the hall (Justin Brierley has since mentioned an attendance of 1700, so I wasn't far out).

Stephen Law isn't best at the podium — his approach is probably better suited to the discussion or small seminar format. William Lane Craig on the other hand has the big speeches to big audiences down pat — but this is nothing new. Anyone who has seen a few debates by Craig knows what to expect, so I should not have been surprised to hear him launch into three of his tried and tested arguments: the Kalām cosmological argument, the argument from objective moral values, and the argument from the resurrection of Jesus. In terms of presentation Stephen Law is not as slick or as superficially convincing as William Lane Craig, but in terms of philosophical engagement Law can clearly hold his own.

I shall not detail each speech here — this has been extensively done elsewhere*, and the unedited audio of the entire two hours is available for streaming and download at the Unbelievable? website. What follows are mostly my immediate impressions of the evening, jotted down during my return train journey that night, interspersed with retrospective comments.

I expected Law to use his Evil God Challenge — and he did, in my view to solid effect, and Craig's efforts to brush it aside were, in my view, ineffective. As usual Craig spoke first, and as usual he attempted to define the scope of the debate by stating what his opponent must do in order to refute him. The reason he does this is so that when he sums up he can point out anything in his list that his opponent didn't address, and claim victory by default. In this case however, Stephen Law — speaking second — made it clear that he would present one argument only. Then he presented his Evil God Challenge, which I've heard him deliver before but never with such clarity and depth.

The Evil God Challenge goes something like this: the evidential problem of evil is well known — with so much gratuitous suffering in the world, both now and in the past, how could an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God allow it? Theists have developed theories — theodicies — to explain how such a good God could allow so much suffering, so much "evil". Whether you think these theodicies are effective reconciliations of the problem of evil will probably depend on your own perspective.

The effectiveness or otherwise of these theodicies, however, isn't relevant to Stephen Law's Evil God Challenge. Even if theists try to explain suffering by claiming it's an inevitable result of God allowing us free will, or that we cannot know the mind of God and he might have good reasons unknown to us to allow so much suffering, or that suffering is necessary in order to throw goodness into sharp relief — all of these arguments (or theodicies) can be applied in reverse to the idea that the universe was created by an omnipotent, omniscient but omnimalevolent God who is seeking to maximise the amount of suffering in the world. But how can the Evil God exist when there's so much good in the world? The evidential problem of good is just as effective in disproving the existence of an evil God as the evidential problem of evil is in disproving the existence of a good God. The two scenarios aren't necessarily entirely symmetrical, but they're symmetrical enough to maintain that if observation is sufficient to dismiss the Evil God Hypothesis — and most people seem to agree that it is — it's also sufficient to dismiss the Good God Hypothesis.

Craig tried to refute the Evil God Hypothesis — or rather, to shrug it off — by simply defining his God as good. But this is an arbitrary definition that can be just as simply reversed, as Law demonstrated. Law quite rightly called out Craig for resorting to the mystery card — Craig predictably claimed that we cannot know what's in the mind of God — that God might have morally sufficient reasons to allow suffering, reasons of which we're unaware. That's not good enough, as Law pointed out.

During the post-debate discussion Law objected to Craig's claiming he had conceded that the cosmological argument was proof of God's existence because he didn't address it. Craig defended his tactic as legitimate in the debate format, which goes to show that he's not debating in order to get closer to the truth, and it reinforces the widely held impression amongst atheists that Craig is only interested in point-scoring. Law then took the opportunity to answer Craig's cosmological argument with a simple statement that he doesn't know why the universe exists, but that doesn't give theists a free pass to say their God did it.

As Law further explained, just because he doesn't know what, if anything, caused the universe, he is nevertheless justified in ruling out certain hypothetical causes. One such is the Evil God, and by reflection — the essence of the Evil God Challenge — another is the Good God. Law also rebutted Craig's evidence for the resurrection of Jesus by citing corroborated UFO reports, showing just how flawed human cognition can be, even en masse.

I think Law put up a good case against Craig, who is acknowledged as a formidable debating opponent. Craig's success at debating, however, relies less on his arguments, which have multiple flaws — some of which Law highlighted — than on his debating style: speaking first, defining the limits of the topic, and listing what his opponent must do to refute him (regardless of what his opponent might think). Added to which Craig is clearly an accomplished public speaker, even if he's usually saying much the same thing every time.

In the face of such debating prowess Stephen Law stuck to his guns — he had a good argument and refused to be deflected. But he also showed that he's no one-trick pony. He's known for the Evil God Challenge, but he was also able to identify the flaws in Craig's use of the cosmological argument (despite not initially addressing it) and the argument from the resurrection of Jesus.

I had originally decided not to attend this debate because I was fed up with William Lane Craig's monotonous repetition of the same arguments, even though I think the question, "Does God Exist?" is the only question in all of theology worth asking (and of course it's the one question theology itself never properly addresses).

The reluctance of certain atheists to go up against Craig is understandable. Craig takes debating seriously and is in it to win. He doesn't seem to be interested in an exchange of ideas — rather, it's all about scoring points. Stephen Law, however, appeared wise to Craig's technique, requiring him to address the challenge in depth rather than letting him shrug it off. This was especially noticeable in the discussion at the end, when Craig couldn't exploit the restrictions of the debate format.

On the whole I'm glad I changed my mind.

---

*Deeper analysis of the debate abounds online. Here are a few samples, beginning with Stephen Law's own notes:
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-criticisms-of-craigs-moral-and.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/opening-speech-craig-debate.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-closing-statement.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/notes-for-responding-to-craigs-possible.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/brief-sketch-of-my-overall-argument-in.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-remaining-notes-from-craig-debate.html
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/thanks-for-all-feedback-re-wlc-debate.html

A comprehensive graphical analysis:
http://www.thepolemicalmedic.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-debate-argument-map/

Randal Rauser's typically idiosyncratic (and continuing) view:
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-round-one/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/was-stephen-law-guilty-of-a-bait-and-switch/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-round-2-craigs-first-rebuttal/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/where-stephen-law-goes-wrong-with-his-evil-god-argument/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/did-a-fairy-kill-stephen-laws-apple-tree/
http://randalrauser.com/2011/10/stephen-law-vs-william-lane-craig-round-2-laws-first-rebuttal/

Paul Wright's analysis:
http://pw201.livejournal.com/159259.html

A Christian who judged Stephen Law a rare winner in this debate:
http://apologiapad.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/bill-craig-loses-a-debate-and-all-sorts-of-goodies-are-revealed/

Unbelievable?: The Conference — Disc 2

Following my review last month of the first disc of this three-DVD set, here's my assessment of the second, which is the Bible Stream.

First up is David Instone-Brewer with "Can I trust the Bible?" He begins with a reference in John in the King James Version to some aspect of the Trinity, which is omitted in modern translations because it is reckoned to be something a copyist noted in the margin, and which was then erroneously included in the main text by a subsequent copyist. This is the kind of thing Bart Erhman has been pointing out for years and is probably nothing new.

Instone-Brewer goes on to claim that many copies had errors and omissions due entirely to personal whim — such as when someone made a copy for use by his family and censored some passages he considered unsuitable for a family audience.

For me this calls into question the accuracy of even the earliest copies. Even though there are thousands of handwritten copies there are no original manuscripts, but Instone-Brewer claims that the profusion of copies allows scholars to infer the original from the many slight differences between the many copies. That's all very well, assuming that the the copies derive from different levels of the biblical "evolutionary tree". But what if they all derive from a single, early copy that contained significant errors? The closer any early copy is to the original, the fewer examples there will be on which to perform such statistical inference, and the less likely any errors are to be correctable. In fact statistical inference will probably reinforce such errors rather than detect and eliminate them.

Instone-Brewer seems to contradict himself when he says "nothing is lost", only a few minutes after declaring his opinion that the ending of Mark is, in fact, lost. He also claims, "Thousands of copies, thousands of problems, but we've got the original." Except, as he's already explained, we haven't got the original. He claims to be able to derive the original, but I think his confidence is misplaced, especially as in answer to a question he says that original texts are fragile and don't last very long. They could, therefore, have been copied erroneously, perhaps only a few times, before being lost forever. Many of those errors are likely to be undetectable.

He also makes the claim that oral sources are more reliable than written sources. This is a claim I've heard before (from, for example, Michael Licona), but it sounds more like wishful thinking than hard fact. Stories are indeed passed down through the generations, but they are embellished and altered for dramatic and polemical effect — and this is an accepted aspect of the oral tradition. No-one expects these stories to be literally or historically true, especially when those telling them have a specific agenda.

Instone-Brewer mentions a stone inscription (apparently now on display in a Paris museum) that describes a Roman Emperor's edict that moving a body from a Jewish grave is to be punishable by death. Instone-Brewer then hints (I think) that this is some kind of evidence for the resurrection of Christ. To me it seems like evidence that the emperor was aware of a religious cult that had persisted after its deceased leader's body had been stolen from a grave, and was anxious to prevent a repetition.

Not being particularly well-read in the New Testament I must thank David Instone-Brewer for pointing out so many problems within the text that I wasn't previously aware of. It seems to me that every so-called justification of the reliability of scripture merely points up its inconsistencies and unreliability, as well as the lengths to which Bible scholars will go in their attempts to validate its historicity.

I'm not one of those who doubt the historical existence of Jesus, but nothing Instone-Brewer says suggests that the supernatural claims of the New Testament are true.

---

David Instone-Brewer also delivers the second talk on this disc, "Is God a moral monster?" — which is the title of Paul Copan's recent book (which I've not read).

He begins by quoting Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, where Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament (he has subsequently stated that he included this over-the-top description largely for comic effect).

Instone-Brewer goes on to describe the morality of the Old Testament, stating that times were different then, but nevertheless the laws of Israel were far more lenient than those of its neighbours. This may have been so, but such an argument skewers the whole idea of objective morality, making it subject to context and prevailing conditions. He confirms this in an answer to a question about the Ten Commandments, claiming that "Thou shalt not kill" doesn't mean you must never kill anybody. In answer to other, harder questions he simply plays the mystery card — apparently morality was different in the past, so much so that we in the modern world cannot understand it.

With regard to sacrifices and slavery he reiterates the claim that the laws of Israel were more lenient than anywhere else. So to modern eyes, it seems, they were relatively less immoral. He answers a question about stoning one's disobedient children to death by going on about drunkards — and I can only assume he didn't properly hear the question. He admits he doesn't understand disproportionate punishment, yet still maintains that God isn't a moral monster.

Inevitably there's a question about the slaughter of the Canaanites, and he gives a good explanation concerning how children are honour-bound to avenge the killing of their parents, and the invading forces knew this, and therefore had to kill them to prevent the grown-up children coming after them years later. Unfortunately this contradicts William Lane Craig's insistence (repeated just this morning on BBC Radio) that the children would be glad to be despatched to Heaven. I think it's safe to say that dishonoured children would not be glad to go to Heaven. This last contradiction is yet another example of the contortions Christians will perform in order to twist their faith into places it will not fit.

---

Some of William Lane Craig's points feature in the final talk on this disc, given by Jay Smith: "Is there evidence for the resurrection?"

Smith states that the resurrection is central to Christian belief, then says he will use Craig's eight points for discussing the resurrection with Muslims and others. I lost count, but the points he raises are the prophecies in the Old and New Testaments, the mentions by Greeks, Romans and Josephus, the empty tomb and the marble inscription already mentioned by David Instone-Brewer.

As in his talk about Islam, Smith soon gets into preacher-mode, which I found a little wearing, but his confident pronouncements seem to rely more on presentation style than logic. He's no more than superficially persuasive, in my view. For instance, I find nothing persuasive about citing Old or New Testament prophecy in support of the actual bodily resurrection of Christ. As has been pointed out, those who wrote the New Testament were intimately familiar with the Old Testament, and they knew what was expected of them. Smith himself hints at this mechanism when he describes the Mithras legends as post-Christ, claiming that the reason such legends are similar to the Gospel accounts of Jesus is that they were copied from them. To me this is applying a double standard.

Smith also states that when a messiah dies, the movement that follows him usually also dies, but this didn't happen in the case of Christ, and this is evidence for the truth of the resurrection. The followers of Christ, however, would have been aware of this tendency, giving them strong motivation for somehow claiming that their messiah was still alive.

Jay Smith has comprehensive arguments with which to knock down the Qur'an and incidentally claims it was not written by Muhammad, but hearing his (understandably) biased approach to Christian scripture I have doubts about his other claims.

---

The final disc is titled Big Questions — I wonder what that will be about.

Grill the world's foremost Christian apologist — Unbelievable?

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? radio programme was a departure from its regular format — which usually aims to get "...Christians and non-believers talking to each other." In advance of William Lane Craig's visit to the UK in October Justin Brierley had him responding to questions sent in by listeners. Peter May, one of the organisers of the Reasonable Faith Tour, was also on the programme.

I wasn't expecting much from this, as the last time Craig was on Unbelievable? he took the opportunity to bad-mouth Richard Dawkins in an unforgivable manner.

But there were some good questions. I've only heard the show once, but here are some thoughts that occurred to me while listening:

When asked by Justin what he thought of Dawkins' refusal to debate him, Craig said Dawkins might be afraid of being humiliated — as he was in his debate with John Lennox. This seems to me a very odd interpretation of events. Dawkins gave up debating theists one-on-one after his encounter with Lennox because Lennox misrepresented the debate afterwards:

http://youtu.be/24vWUeMnXBg


Small wonder that Dawkins refuses to debate Craig, when Craig himself echoes Lennox in misrepresenting what actually happened. (The whole of Dawkins' talk is available here: http://youtu.be/xbza-UtseE0 — well worth watching.)

Concerning Polly Toynbee's withdrawal from debating with him, Craig suggested that atheists seem to have got together and agreed to boycott "this type of event". It seems more likely that they got together and agreed not to debate William Lane Craig, as they know he's not interested in dialogue, only point-scoring.

Then Craig answered some listener questions. After some preliminary exposition of the Kalām Cosmological Argument he attempted to rebut Justin Schieber's excellent point about temporal causality — that one can't really say anything about cause and effect when time doesn't exist — and in doing so produced a real howler. He resorted to "simultaneity", claiming that intentions can be simultaneous with actions and therefore not temporal. But "simultaneous" means "at the same time". In what way is simultaneity non-temporal?

Fine-tuning was next up, and as usual Craig, like other theists, simply takes fine-tuning as a given. But look at the size of the universe. No, really, look at its SIZE.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."¹

Intelligent life (that stuff the universe is supposedly fine-tuned to support) is as far as we know an infinitesimally insignificant part of the universe. One could characterise intelligent life as a "homeopathically tiny" concentration in the unfathomably vast cosmos. Statistically speaking, therefore, there is no intelligent life at all in the universe. How can the nominal non-existence of any such thing be described as the result of "fine tuning"?

A. C. Grayling's comment that he'd sooner debate the existence of leprechauns and fairies than the existence of God was described by Craig as "condescending". This is symptomatic of the false importance theists ascribe to their wacky beliefs. They complain they're not being taken seriously, yet cannot provide any reason why they should be. We have, of course, heard this before. During a debate in 2009 Richard Harries objected to Richard Dawkins' similar characterisation:

"You can't let Richard get away with that. That's a ridiculous remark. You cannot confuse the God of classical theism, which has animated the whole of western philosophy, with a leprechaun."²

But like Craig, Harries provided no sound reason not to.

Another question was about the moral argument for God, and as expected Craig trotted out his usual claim that it's logically impossible for God to be immoral because it's part of God's nature to be moral. But he merely asserts that this is so. The only justification for such an assertion is that God is defined to be moral. This isn't really a justification, it's nothing more than an arbitrary definition.

And this man is supposedly the world's foremost Christian apologist.

---

1. Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy — the original radio scripts. London 1985, Pan Books.
2. Lord Richard Harries, during a debate at Wellington College, Crowthorne, on the motion "Atheism is the New Fundamentalism", November 2009.

17th October — Stephen Law vs William Lane Craig

Polly Toynbee, president of the British Humanist Association, was due to debate William Lane Craig, to kick off his October tour of the UK. She pulled out once she realised what kind of thing a debate with Craig is, and philosopher Stephen Law has stepped in to take her place.

I had decided not to attend the debate, as I was getting pretty sick of Craig's debating style. He does these things not in an effort to explore the arguments, but to "win". We saw this with two recent debates, first with Lawrence Krauss, and then with Sam Harris. Both Krauss and Harris have interesting and original things to say about their particular areas of concern, cosmology and morality respectively. But Craig isn't concerned with learning from either of them. Perhaps though, Krauss and Harris learned something from Craig — but it would not have been anything about the evidence for God, or the moral necessity of God. They may, however, have learned how to score superficial debating points — not that either of them would have been interested in doing such a thing.

So I decided, as noted above, that I was done with Craig and his "Reasonable Faith Tour".

I have, however, reconsidered. Previously I decided not to attend a conversation between Sam Harris and Giles Fraser (regular readers will know how much Fraser irritates me), but later regretted my decision, because when I changed my mind I discovered all tickets were sold.

To forestall potentially similar regrets I do now have a ticket for the Craig vs Law debate at Westminster Central Hall at 7:30 pm on Monday 17th October. Partly this is because I'm currently reading Stephen Law's new book, Believing Bullshit, and partly because of all those put up against Craig on this tour and elsewhere, Stephen Law seems likely to be the most capable of tackling Craig on his own terms. Perusal of his blog indicates he's not taking the debate lightly (he is, at least, getting plenty of advice).

Naturally you can expect a full report.

More on objective morality

Here's the latest video from that scourge of theistic obfuscation, NonStampCollector. What's interesting about his approach here (apart from his unusually minimal wielding of the subtle, awesome power of Microsoft Paint) is that in order to make his point he takes on board almost every assumption and presupposition tacitly proposed by William Lane Craig — and still shows why they lack foundation.

http://youtu.be/zXO26pObTZA


The whole question of morality — objective, absolute or otherwise — is now receiving much-needed scrutiny, and the theistic (particularly Christian) proprietorial claims on it are being shown for what they are — unfounded, vacuous and arbitrary.

(Via Fergus Gallagher.)

Oh Kalamity — a cosmological debunking

The Kalām Cosmological Argument is a favourite of William Lane Craig. It's formulated in such a way as to preempt objections, though as I've previously mentioned on numerous blogposts this disingenuous wordplay — an attempt to insulate the argument from criticism — fails.

This great video is as comprehensive a take-down of the Kalām's flawed logic as we're likely to see for some time — at least until some new cosmological theory emerges from legitimate science. The analysis and arguments presented here are thorough, properly referenced and in many cases from the very mouths of the cosmologists themselves.

http://youtu.be/baZUCc5m8sE


Here's the info on the video, copied from YouTube:

We hope this is the definitive take down of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. We show how it is contradictory and that the physics being used to support it doesn't do so. We also had this video reviewed by Marcus, one of the Cosmology Advisers on Physics Forums to make sure there were no errors, his words
"I think it is excellent.Your narrator comes across as really smart and personable....I don't see any glaring errors, really amazingly good
it's charming, intelligent, visually engaging, sporadically really beautiful like the brief cut of the Hubble telescope and the volcano etc. Well-made!"

And here's what P. Z. Myers says in his Pharyngula post (credited to Skepchick) that alerted me to it:

This is a wonderful video debunking the Kalam Cosmological Argument. What I really like about it is that it takes the tortured rationales of theologians like William Lane Craig, who love to babble mangled pseudoscience in their arguments, and shows with direct quotes from the physicists referenced that the Christian and Muslim apologists are full of shit.

Watch and enjoy.