So I did a google reader search on Sam Harris and William Lane Craig and I thought I'd run through some of the reactions (find all my coverage with my Harris vs. Craig tag).

Before the debate, Theodore Beale (Vox Day) had this to say:

It should be interesting to see if Craig elects to make his own positive arguments and challenge Harris to refute them or if he takes a cue from TIA and shreds the arguments that Harris puts forth.

Not withstanding that Beale agrees with the new atheists on the argument from evil and simply proposes a less awesome, not that moral god to fix the problem...  Whatever dude.

Wintery Knight Blog decides to play up the "I don't like Yahweh" angle to the extreme and ignore the arbitrariness of defining "good" as Yahweh's nature with his summary here.  Good job.

An atheist, "Reasonably Aaron," says:

The problem is [Harris] was all over the place in terms of answering Craig's objections and never refuted Craig's knock-down argument that he presented in the 1st reply.

Which "knock down argument" was that again?  Um...no, Harris just pretty much ignored Craig's irrelevant points and had the debate he wanted to have.  That's not being all over the place. Aaron then proceeds to make basically the same point that Harris did which is that Craig is secretly using the same basis to bridge the value/fact divide. 

Uncommon Descent tries to unconvincingly squeeze the debate into their categories and says:

How can one scientifically examine if an intelligent agent exists or is causative, if one a priori excludes intelligent agents from possible causes?

What did that have to do with their debate again?  When did Harris exclude the possibility of intelligent causes?  Where did all these thoughts come from?!?!  Who knows...

So, good job everyone!  Keep up the lame work.  This really inspires my confidence in humanity.

Ben

See here for audio.  Here for video.

Sam Harris ignored much of William Lane Craig's chop shop syllogistic framing and simply presented a positive case for naturalistic moral realism based on the well being of conscious creatures and then attacked in broad strokes the inherent double standards and irrelevancy of Craig's Biblical Christian theistic ontological "sound" "basis" of morality.  I thought this was reasonably justified as Harris is talking to a room full of Christians.  At no point did I feel that Harris defaulted to his talking points at the expense of addressing some meaningful point as I've seen him do in the past (which I was cynically expecting). 

The one point that basically landed the debate in Harris' favor despite not intimately following Craig down his prescribed ultra narrow path for the debate was this:  Harris pointed out (@ :09 seconds) that arbitrarily defining God's nature as good is just as much a "definitional game" as Craig's most relevant objection (@ :59 seconds) to Harris' case in his opening.  That's pretty much all that needs to be said.  Craig in turn reasserted that "no" by definition God is the most worthy of worthiness.  My only real complaint about Harris is that he didn't follow up and slam Craig on this in his closing statement and point out that just appealing to how awesomely awesome we've defined the Christian god is simply no different than hypothetically defining Harris' "worst misery for everyone" concept and accepting that connection between facts and values as unavoidably representative of the human condition.  That would have knocked it out of the park and stuck Craig in the exact same boat.

Craig is of course set at the proverbial Spinal Tap "11" on morality like if natural morality isn't the most objectively objective objective moral objectivity that's objective beyond objective....he's getting his Nazi on and rapin those babies.  Craig seemed incredibly shaken in his first rebuttal to Harris as though at some level he was connecting with where Harris was coming from, but still forced to prescribe all of his superfolous Christian ideology on top of what was already a reasonably complete picture.  What a dirty job.  To have to be an evil apologist and justify the god of the Bible, and to have to undercut what you've already admitted is common ground observational good that obviously appeals to all people beyond the confines of Christian theology that is such a ridiculous task to justify.  I wouldn't want to be Craig.  I hope he can live with himself.

Ben

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By some fluke of the time-space continuum, you wake up one morning to discover that you live culturally next door in the same country with an equally proportionate amount of ancient Aztecs who offer human sacrifices to their gods on a regular basis.  After a period of time of learning the language, you have a conversation over the fence with some of their most outspoken representatives and they tell you that it is perfectly okay for human sacrifice to be legal because you don't personally have to kill any humans yourself.  They are pro-choice.  You, as a conservative minded person, evaluate your options.  You can:

A:  Passively support legislation to make pro-life laws banning human sacrifice, waging a decades long legal war with Aztec representatives in various courts and Congress.

B:  Start a war based on your irreconcilable differences with your evil neighbors.  

If you chose A, I'd be surprised.  People are being murdered and you resolve to vote perhaps once a year about it.  If you remember to send in your voter registration that year, of course.  

If you chose B, you are on the same moral page with the killers of abortion doctors, given that you think the unborn are equally human as anyone being sacrificed by your next door Aztec neighbors.  

You are also on the same page with most of the Liberals in this country I would think, who would probably be right there with you starting that war because they have basically the same values you do in reference to the institutionalized murder of innocent humans.

By not starting this war over the abortion debate, by implication, it appears that you do not value the unborn as much as you think you do.  (BTW, please do not start a war over the abortion debate.)  You just value them a little bit more than Liberals. 

Discuss.

[Note:  I was going to post pictures of aborted fetuses for comparison, but it turns out those pictures are a lot more gruesome than that one.]

Outro:

Moral disagreements do not have to be the intellectual equivalent of a game of turbo tops if we are willing to systematically evaluate why we value what we value.  We can be wrong or ignorant about the facts and wrong on our own terms by making use of logical fallacies to justify our claims, etc.  My hypothesis is that when most humans take correcting for all of that seriously there will be a lot more convergence than not.  Most people don't do that.  They accept their first impression of things and it's all superficial attack and defend from there with little to no possibility of self-correction.  Even if they do have some change of heart, or several, there's still nothing really rigorous about it, and it is more psychological accident than intentional method. 

Of course there are also the problems of resolving differences between liberal pacifists who presumably wouldn't choose option B in any event.  Additionally, what happens when our country fights an unjust war overseas?  This particular thought experiment is just directed at conservatives even if we can think of ways to make it more messy.

I have plans to build an argument map attempting to reconcile some of the differing answers that prominent atheists have given to the abortion question.  It will at the very least show which particular issues need to be resolved between them on the secular side of things and which disagreements are illusionary.

Ben

I'm somewhat curious as to Pinker's account of the motivation behind human sacrifice to the gods, but it is plausible and we'll move on.

Spoiler alert:  Despite the pretenses of disagreement the only difference between Harris and Pinker's position is a semantic one over what we mean by science (which Pinker discusses at the end of his talk).

Pinker claims that science can't discover that we should be consistent with our values and hold our own suffering and well being in principle as of the same value as the suffering and well being of others (including cats).  Yet Pinker clearly believes that we should and that this is a better moral conviction.  Pinker wants to split the realms of scientific discovery and reason as though Harris wasn't already putting reason in the pot of a general scientific frame of mind.  But why is it a "reason" if it does not appeal to some fact of the world?  Why should I be consistent with my values if that doesn't relate to the actual consequences of my own mental states?

What if we evaluate the factual claim about two different people.  One lives a life of double standards and the other universal reciprocity.  On their own terms of seeking choice mental states which is clearly what each is attempting to do, who is making out better?  And yet we all know that reciprocity tends to bring in the better dividends.  That's a fact of the world that science can discover (or even overturn) that is just as on par with the first half of Pinker's talk that goes through example after example where science clarified some factual dispute that fixed our moral picture.  It can't even be a meaningful "a-scientific reason" unless that is so. 

There are many different ways to play out the criminal justice system.  What if we are missing out on some benefit by only relying on the most minimal of deterrence?  What if some manner of vindictive eye for an eye punishment actually stands to make the world a better place?  Either Pinker is going to appeal to some discoverable fact about the world of the well-being of conscious creatures or he is stuck with making some uninteresting and unmotivating appeal to nonsense.  There's no other option.  And that's exactly what Pinker unwittingly appeals to!  He speaks of there being good reason to calibrate the criminal justice system so as to make sure it is not incentivizing the worst possible scenarios where a shop-lifter is compelled to murder in order to ensure the lesser probability of getting caught and supremely punished.  Hence, we tone down the punishments so that only lesser crimes are committed by the most common and trivial criminal motivations. 

But what is defining the worst possible scenarios?  Well clearly having living shop keepers with access to all the choice mental states that implies (or not having to recover from a gun shot wound) is already exactly what Harris' theory predicts Pinker will have to refer to to make a convincing moral argument.  We can say that "science" discovered it, but only in the basic sense that we observed it and thought about it.  That's just part of the overall scientific method or mindset Harris is referring to even if a particular question doesn't necessarily need to be taken to the super-evaluated lab coat level.

Pinker admits by the end of his talk that he is merely making a semantic distinction that Harris doesn't make.  Science means "knowledge," right?  So no, all those domains of knowledge are not "honorary" science.  They are real science if they represent actual knowledge that represents a testable and possibly defeasible conclusion.  Hence, there's no disagreement of substance between Harris and Pinker, just a preference of terms to congeal with unhealthy pop-cultural notions of where science begins and ends.  At least, that's a great deal more self awareness than the others on the panel had.

Outro:

Bravo to Pinker for not totally stifling the conversation.  We don't have to heap him on the pile of why philosophers suck at making important issues accessible for progressive public consumption.

Ben

Intro:

Christian apologists from around the world gathered in San Diego to discuss honestly their misgivings about defending the faith.  It was an unprecedented, no-holds-barred, "skeptifest" of Biblical proportions.  It had been long supposed that Christians could stand up to any intellectual attacks and hence had nothing to fear from brandishing their confidence for all to see.  Everyone was encouraged to get their most skeptical thoughts and doubts "out there" and see what others had to say.  By some accounts, from some of my atheist friends who were allowed to attend, this apparently snow-balled into mass apostasy.  I'm still a little skeptical, but I've pulled some intriguing quotes from the transcript.  Take a look...

At first everyone was a bit squeamish to speak and a few offered some rather vague random points of contention that really didn't matter that much to the big picture.  Finally, William Lane Craig just blurted out why he'd apparently stopped trusting the Holy Spirit:

Of course, anyone (or, at least any sort of theist) can claim to have a self-authenticating witness of God to the truth of his religion. [...] they've just had some emotional experience...

Dead silence.  Um...that's the HOLY FREAKING SPIRIT you are talking about.  And yet Richard Swinburne cheered Craig on and was remarkably sarcastic noting (with air quotes no less) we'd never want to be forced into certain absurdities based on that kind of evidence:

...if it seems to me Poseidon exists, then it is good evidence that Poseidon exists.

He had the whole crowd rolling with laughter since they all knew that the Greek pantheon had a long history of success in the hearts and minds of ancient Greeks.  Were they really going there?  Maybe I'm missing something.

Staunch evidentialist, Lydia McGrew, wanted to turn the conversation to more tangible matters and get the ball rolling on discussing her lack of confidence in the resurrection of Jesus: 

Well of course the prior probability is very low and we all know that. [...]

There’s a most unfortunate passage by G. K. Chesterton in which he says, “If my Apple woman, the woman who sells me apples tells me that she saw a miracle I should believe her. I believe her about apples so I should believe her about miracles.” That’s a paraphrase; it’s not an exact quotation.

I really wish Chesterton hadn’t said that because that’s just wrong as an approach. You don’t just automatically say, “Oh, somebody says they saw a miracle, I’m going to buy it.” You have to have much stronger evidence than that.

Indeed.  I can agree with that.  Triablogger, Steve Hays immediately piped up with three pertinent examples of the kind of evidence we would need to justify various kinds of similar extraordinary claims: 

[In reference to having an alien spaceship]  On the face of it, I could discharge my burden of proof by showing you the spacecraft.  Of course, you might insist on having it properly inspected (to eliminate a hoax).

So what evidence would I need to prove that I own this unique coin? [...]  Ideally, the only evidence I'd need to prove that I own this unique coin is the coin itself. My ability to produce the coin upon request.  Maybe you'd demand that the coin be authenticated. Fine.

...suppose I call you up and tell you I've just won the lottery (and on the first occasion I've ever bought a ticket). Surely that's an extraordinary claim. Naturally you're skeptical, so I invite you over to my house, where you see with your own eyes both my ticket and the newspaper reporting the winning numbers. I'd say that would be sufficient for you to rationally believe that I've won the lottery.

So it was a case of a highly improbable event that required evidence of a[n] admittedly powerful [...] kind in order to be rationally believed.

I can't help but note that it was almost as though the words of atheist, Richard Carrier, were on the minds of all those in attendance:

If Jesus was a god and really wanted to save the world, he would have appeared and delivered his Gospel personally to the whole world.

Recognizing of course that Jesus didn't do this, Craig spoke up again to say what had been weighing on everyone's mind since the conference began: 

...you are thinking, “Well, goodness, if believing in God is a matter of weighing all of these sorts of arguments, then how can anybody know whether God exists? You'd have to be a philosopher or a scientist to figure out whether God exists!” In fact, I agree with you. A loving God would not leave it up to us to figure out by our own ingenuity and cleverness whether or not he exists.

People were clearly shocked.  And it got everyone lingering on the problem of evil.  Hays spoke up again to point out that the long standing explanations for evil from Calvinism and Arminianism both suck: 

...it sounds bad [...] to say that God predestined sin and evil. However, it also sounds bad to say that God allows sin and evil.

Everyone was dismayed by this.  How could they all have been defending such bad explanations for evil all of this time?  How in the world had Christian apologetics kept up with it?  They weren't all that stupid and/or delusion were they!?!  No one especially wanted to hear atheist, John Loftus, say, "I told you so."  Even though their faiths seemed to be cracking under the weight of their collective doubts, they all agreed no one wanted to hear that guy gloat. 

Hays had clearly been thinking things through and gave everyone an astute analogy to help explain where most everyone had gone wrong with their apologetic sensibilities: 

Almost too proud of himself for how well he'd explained things, something clearly snapped in his mind.  Hays collapsed on the floor in front of everyone and started mumbling almost incoherently.  It seemed he was talking about himself though he couldn't bring himself to even speak in the first person:

...he indulges in so many ad hominem attacks [...] which includes that constitutional incapacity for self criticism in its judgmental criticism of others which emboldens him to openly expose his emotional insecurities, oblivious to the disconnect between the image he is laboring to project and what is really coming through.

It also seemed that he was admitting that all of his previous apologetic efforts could not be said to:

...move us from a state of ignorance to a state of knowledge.

He'd realized that too many people had been wondering if Hays was:

...really that dense, or if he is just playing dumb to advance his agenda.

And whether or not it was always just a "rhetorical tactic:"

...to impose an all-or-nothing dilemma on the reader.

Hays was okay apparently and someone nursed him back to health in a corner of the room as the conference moved on.  Was he really talking about himself?!?  We may never know.

The next day after Hays had recomposed himself, he was overheard talking to fellow Triablogger, Jason Engwer, about all the horrible things that he'd said about agnostic, Ed Babinski, to get out of the force of the case in Ed's "The Cosmology of the Bible" chapter in "The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails."  Hays finally admitted it was implausible to dismiss all the evidence that the Bible embraces a false cosmology:

Mixed metaphors are mutually inconsistent if taken literally, but a wide variety of metaphors can and do figurate the very same concept.

So I guess they did understand the criticism after all to all their hairsplitting?  Not sure. 

Elsewhere, William Lane Craig was overheard discussing the many universes hypothesis with Robin Collins:

We appear then to be confronted with two alternatives: posit either a cosmic Designer or an exhaustively random, infinite number of other worlds. Faced with these options, is not theism just as rational a choice as multiple worlds?

They both agreed they hadn't taken the hypothesis seriously enough in the past and that we really weren't in any position to decide between two rational options.   I didn't think Christians were capable of agnosticism on that issue...

Near the end of the conference there were a lot of tears shed and everyone was looking around at each other a bit anxiously, thankful they had not brought any babies to test their new atheist appetites on or any children to dismember to make sure they were made of all atoms.  Triablogger, Paul Manata went around poking walls, waiving his arms up and down, and testing various places on the floor to check on the uniformity of the universe for everyone.  He kept yelling, "It's all clear!" over and over again to the annoyance of all.  Finally they told him to shut up and that they should just go with it until further notice.  However everyone was still bracing for impact and wondering how they could prepare for the inevitable Nazi-brainwashing-rapist-regime that was sure to sweep the whole world away from them now that they'd changed their minds about Jesus.

Fortunately libertarian renegade and (former) theologian extraordinaire, Vox Day spoke up to call attention to atheist, Sam Harris' book, "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values":

I have to applaud Sam for having the intellectual courage to seize the bull by the horns; unlike his fellow New Atheists (except Daniel Dennett), he has recognized the weak point of the lack of universal warrant and is attempting to do something about it.

So amazingly, all was not lost. 

Outro:

If anyone has any other interesting quotes from the conference, post them in the comments, please.

Ben