April 13, 2011

• Yes, William Lane Craig is still wrong about morality.

  Intro:

  Christians who saw the debate between Christian apologist, William Lane Craig, and atheist, Sam Harris, are baffled.  Why didn't Craig's amazing arguments work?  Isn't it obvious that Harris didn't even begin to provide an objective ontological account of morality and wasted all his time throwing red herrings at Abrahamic religions? 

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  Wintery Knight blog says:

  I really think that what is behind atheism’s philosophical flirtations with the language of morality is an effort to put a respectable smokescreen around a worldview adopted by those who simply cannot be bothered with any moral obligation that might act as a speed bump on their pursuit of happy feelings and pleasures here and now. They want to be happy, and being good gets in their way.

  What kind of "being good" is Wintery Knight talking about?  Did he listen to the same debate I did?  I thought Craig said that he probably agreed with Harris generally on applied ethics.

  Steve Hays, from Triablogue, says:

  To judge by how infidels handicap the Craig debates, Craig is caught in a hopeless dilemma. No matter how often he wins, it never counts. The usual excuse is that when he wins a debate with an atheist, that’s just because he’s a better debater. Not because he was right. Not because he had the best of the argument. Had the facts on his side. No, couldn’t be that. Never that.

  One wonders that even if an atheist said that a theist provided better arguments than an atheist in a particular debate if that would "count" for Hays.  *coughCommonSenseAtheismcough*  In reality, Hays just doesn't like being disagreed with at all and his words that seem to be about something else really aren't.  I've seen him move the goal-post soooooo many times, it's not even funny.

  William Lane Craig himself says:

  So how can some atheists fail to see [that Craig's arguments are better], I ask myself.  One reason, I think, is that some people don't know how to judge a debate.  They think that the winner is the person who delivers the one line zinger like "Senator, you're no John Kennedy."  [...]  But my friend Dennis has pointed out something else to me:  there are cheerleaders and there are analysts.  The role of a cheerleader is to support the team, no matter how badly it is losing.  If a team is getting drubbed, the cheerleaders don’t lay down their pom-poms and give up.  They keep cheering to the end.  That’s their role.

  All those years of experience and this is what Craig comes up with?  Okay...  That's actually called just not empathizing with the diverse landscape of where tons of different people are coming from.  Natural human epistemology is wwaaaaaayyyy more complicated than that.  If Craig doesn't want to be portrayed as a dishonest hack as he often is by equally unsympathetic atheists, and knows that he is an honest person that believes in his own arguments, he can shut up. 

  Dr.Craigvideos on youtube makes much the same point as Craig.

  Bnonn says:

  In fact, the most annoying thing about Harris is how he can say the most outrageously illogical or irrelevant things, and make them sound utterly reasonable and topical with his soft-spoken earnestness.

  As though it's clear Harris believes in what he says...

  So the consensus is that a bunch of monkeys are miffed that not everyone in the world agrees with them.  Join the club.

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  Why atheists remain unconvinced:

  I'll reiterate and elaborate on what I said in my original review of the debate (Sam Harris vs. William Lane Craig on Moral Realism).  It's pretty simple actually (as others like Wes Morriston pointed out a long time ago).   If Harris isn't allowed to "redefine" good and evil conveniently to bridge the fact/value divide (as Craig claims), then Craig can't do the same thing with his god's "good" nature (as Harris pointed out, ftw).  Craig meaninglessly tried to spear-head this objection in his opening statement with an argument from boldness.  He said..."far from being arbitrary...," and then changed the subject from god's commands to god's arbitrary nature.  So no, it's still arbitrary.  We're just not fooled, Craig.  You can't point to "god's nature" when we attack the arbitrary "commands" any more than it makes sense to point to the commands when we the arbitrariness of his nature.   "Good" has to actually be defined at some point.  Craig is playing a moving cups game with only two cups that both have the very same problem underneath.  Somehow, as usual, it's always opposite day in religulous land and losing either way still turns into winning over all in the minds of indignant Christians everywhere. 

  Craig wants us to merely appreciate his definition of the Christian god and go from there with moral facts.  But Harris just wants us to appreciate his definition of the worst misery for everyone and go from there with moral facts.  Both propositions depend on the appreciation factor that is ultimately coming from our human nature (as Harris says, we're "smuggling" in well being either way).  It's the only way we understand either proposition which is actually the same continuum in concept.  In either event we're simply able to recognize the gist of good and bad when we see it (just as Harris says we can recognize fuzzy concepts like health vs. being dead). 

  Incidentally, Harris' side of things has two significant advantages:

  1.  The Christians have no reason for their god's nature to be the way it is.  Metaphysically speaking, it's just a huge fluke of reality.  Why are we not supposed to abuse children...because god's arbitrary nature happens to be against that.  Kinda weird, huh?  On the other hand, if we evolved as social creatures in the context of the need for group cooperation and survival, there's a very obvious ontological reason for our brains to be wired the way they are (as even Craig explains). 

  2.  The facts of human nature (as opposed to god's hidden nature) are much more immediately evident and verifiable to all.  We may be confused on how best to define the good derived from our natures, but at least it's pretty obvious we definitely have that to work with. 

  The scandalous thing about Harris' position is that it isn't even an argument.  It's an observation.  The argument part of that observation is to show to any and all contenders that in fact his observation matches reality and where they err, but also that it matches the inherent realities of their own moral perspective and they just have yet to recognize it.  Harris did this more than sufficiently for Craig and I've noted how superficial the summations of Harris' position have to be in many Christian blogs in order to avoid this (especially Wintery Knight's conveniently trite overview). 

  As an observation, of course everyone agrees from there (as Craig clearly did) that science can play out the facts of maximizing well being.  That was all Harris was aiming for and clearly pretty much everything I've said can easily be derived from what Harris said on stage. 

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  Outro:

  We'll get around to fishing out the myopic Christian attempts to save Craig from his hypocritical circularity as well as addressing similar double standards when it comes to Craig's supposed "knock down" argument against Harris' position.  Stay tuned.
  

  Ben

  • 8:26 pm
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