Sam Harris vs. William Lane Craig debate

Here, we are at Notre Dame, in 2001 for the second annual "God Debate." In In this corner, William Lane Craig, Christian apologist. In this corner, Sam Harris, unapologetic atheist. Up above, perhaps, God is watching the debate with a couple of buddies, and laughing.

"Those fucking mortals!" God says.

Anyway.

I don't remember how I found the debate. Perhaps YouTube suggested it. But no matter. Find it I did, and this morning, intending to write on a different topic entirely, it came to mind. And then I opened the eight new tabs that I blogged about here.

For those who don't know, and even for those who do, a Christian apologist isn't a person who apologizes for Christianity. An apologist is "a person who offers an argument in defense of something controversial."  Christian Apologetics is enough of a thing to have its own Wikipedia page, here. And Sam Harris, who I described as an "unapologetic atheist," is also an apologist. See what I did there?

Anyway.

This morning I was going to write about something that happened in the "Spiritual Journeys" course that Bobbi and just finished, and the debate seemed relevant and before you could say "Don't open any more tabs," eight new ones were opened! So of course I had to metablog on that topic, as I mentioned, here, before I get to the original first topic, which I hope will have a reference real soon, here.

Anyway.

I listened to the debate and concluded that William Lane Craig was by far the superior debater and that Sam Harris had done a terrible job of breaking down Craig's arguments. From the transcript at Craig's website, here:

In tonight’s debate I’m going to defend two basic contentions:

1. If God exists, then we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties.

2. If God does not exist, then we do not have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties.

Very specifically Craig says he's going to avoid the question of whether God exists. Or how we might know of his existence. He says:

I shall not be arguing tonight that God exists. Maybe Dr. Harris is right that atheism is true. That wouldn’t affect the truth of my two contentions. All that would follow is that objective moral values and duties would, then, contrary to Dr. Harris, not exist. 

His debate point is conditional: if God exists, we have a foundation; if not, then not. And his subtext, elaborated later is this: that if we don't have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties then WTF, anything someone might choose do on moral grounds is on subjective moral grounds, which means (Craig avers) it's just a matter of opinion. And since people like ISIS would in future years think that it's moral to chop heads off, well, that's as well founded, on moral grounds, as Mother Theresa ministering to the poor.

And sadly, for Team Atheist, Harris does not clearly address his point. (Disclosure:  I am not a member of Team Atheist, but some of my best friends are atheists, so I can root for Team Atheist; and some of my best friends are Christians, so I root for Team Christianity, too). He does, in fact address it, as I learned from reading the transcript, and as was clear to me after reading reviews of the debate. I came to the same conclusion that another favorite blogger, Luke Muhlenhauser came to here:

As usual, Craig’s superior framing, scholarship and debate skills ‘won’ the debate for him. 

Too bad. Because his argument, which sounds so good, is really a bad one, and it's unfortunate, for the sake of good-debating form, that Sam Harris did not say what I would have said.

Craig's argument, "If God exists, then we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties" translates to: "If an entity that I have not yet described, defined, and about whose existence I will not debate at this time, exists, then we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties."

He then describes some of the characteristics of this Thing-that-he-does-not-want-to-debate-the existence-of and his description, in my view brings his thesis to this:

If an entity whose nature provides a solid foundation for objective moral values and duties exists, then we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties.

Harris, for his part, does not make his better and more coherent argument relevant. My favorite blogger, Scott Alexander, makes the argument clearly here:

If God made His rules arbitrarily, then there is no reason to follow them except for self-interest (which is hardly a moral motive), and if He made them for some good reason, then that good reason, and not God, is the source of morality.

Not having made this important point, Harris proceeds to provide testable criteria against which an act can be tested for greater or lesser morality. The criteria are themselves neither objective, nor subjective, but definitional, and consistent with our native sense of what is moral and what is not moral. The point that Harris fails to make is that to have a reasoned discussion real things (like behavior) at an abstract level (like morality) you have to define the abstraction, and then able to test whether some real thing does or does not match the definition. So a mammal is an abstract category with a definition that lets us test whether or not a particular entity does or not belong to the category mammal. And God is an abstract category (a Singleton, according to monotheistic religions) that must be defined in order that one can tell whether or not a particular entity belongs to the category God. And in the case of monotheistic religions, assuming one found anything that met the criteria one would then have to demonstrate that no other entity fit the category.

Scott Alexander's argument, quoted above is part of a much longer, well reasoned 13,000 word essay on consequentialism, which I will unnecessarily, but for your convenience, re-link to here.

The section most relevant to this post, in its entirety is quoted below:

What would it mean to say that God created morality?

If it means that God has declared certain rules and will reward those who follow them and punish those who break them - well, fair enough, if God exists He could certainly do that. But that would not be morality. After all, Stalin also declared certain rules and rewarded those who followed them and punished those who broke them, but that did not make his rules moral.

If God made His rules arbitrarily, then there is no reason to follow them except for self-interest (which is hardly a moral motive), and if He made them for some good reason, then that good reason, and not God, is the source of morality.

If it means that God has declared certain rules and we ought to follow them out of love and respect because He's God, then where are that love and respect supposed to come from? Realizing that we should love and respect our Creators and those who care for us itself requires morality. Calling God “good" and identifying Him as worth respecting requires a standard of goodness outside of God's own arbitrary decree. And if God's decree is not arbitrary but for some good reason, then that good reason, and not God, is the source of morality.

Newspaper advice columnists frequently illuminate moral rules that their readers have not thought of, and those rules are certainly good ones and worth following, but that does not make newspaper advice columnists the source of morality.

References: transcript.
The first review of the debate I found thought Craig was weak, Harris awesome. WTF? I disagree. But it's here. And it led me to a far better review.  The author of that review says:

[Addendum: looks like Luke is going to be more thoroughly picking apart the arguments. He also has a nice round-up of reviews.]

"Luke," I guessed was Luke Muehlhauser, a frequent contributor at the LessWrong rationalist community. And it was.

And here are part 1, part 2, and part 3 of his thorough analysis of the debate. And here's Luke's bio.