Atheist/historian Richard Carrier recently debated Christian apologist/librarian J. P. Holding on the "Textual Reliability of the New Testament" or more specifically, "Do we have what they had?" Tidbits are trickling through the internet, so I'll give my preliminary sentiments based on where I happen to be coming from.

There are so many debates nested around NT studies between educated believers and skeptics that no matter how dedicated you are, you simply can't dive into every single one of them in depth (and apparently this doesn't change even when you are a professional, and if you listen to others, it seems infinitely worse).  It seems I tend to be aware of many of them and at least have some idea of how the positions are argued, but the well justified clinching details that may sell one case over another are often beyond reach for practicality sake (especially if I identify upfront the end result of any given debate as having either little impact or relevance overall in any event, such as with the documentary hypothesis). 

Even having reviewed the entire dialog between skeptics and Christians over the arguments made by Robert Price in "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave" (including Price's response to those critics), it didn't really go that far.  Either there just isn't very far to go, no one happens to know how to make those cases in depth, or for whatever reason the sensibilities of either party just never takes us there (or some combination).  I've read a few of Bart Ehrman's books on the topic and even those didn't seem to have a lot going for them in this regard.  I'm hopeful that Carrier has pushed that envelope as far as it can go based on the available evidence since he seemed eager to have this kind of debate.  And at least Holding seems aware enough of skeptic arguments and what actual trained historians have said on the Christian side of things to perhaps shed that kind of light the other direction.  Maybe we'll walk away with a clearer view overall.   

So...I'm just asking for more depth and intellectual honesty from both sides.  I want to see people cite the actual sources, articulate their specific claims without relying on innuendo and worldview prejudice, and be reasonable with the relative weaknesses of their cases.  It's also nice to know (here and here) that perhaps the conversation moved up out of nonsensical defensive rhetoric land and into "explaining what the deal is" land thanks to those healthy social pressures of in person debate which tend to summon their better foot forward rather than the empathy-deficient internet banter does (though some exceptions do apply).  Perhaps folks on both sides can learn to take it down a notch thanks to this event.

Intro:

This is part of my review series on the skeptical anthology, "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave" (ET).  Basically I've lifted this little bit from my material on chapter 4 of that book, which is the essay, "Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a Post-Pauline Interpolation" written by Robert Price (which can actually be found many places online). 

The reason I'm bumping this up is because J. P. Holding and Richard Carrier recently debated in person on the related topic of the textual reliability of the New Testament and I hope to build on what's gone before between skeptics and Christians.

Chris Price from Christian CADRE, J. P. Holding from Tektonics (in an essay that was online, but is now in the book, "Trusting the New Testament"), Steve Hays from Triablogue (in the ebook, "This Joyful Eastertide"), Stephen Davis (which is in a philosophy paper you'd have to pay for), and Norman Geisler are addressing Price's arguments.  I've tried to play all their points against each other to see what the arguments amount to from an outsider perspective.

Chris Price says:

However, Holding says:

Robert Price had quoted William O. Walker Jr. to explain himself (page 71):

...the surviving text of the Pauline letters is the text promoted by the historical winners in the theological and ecclesiastical struggles of the second and third centuries….In short, it appears likely that the emerging Catholic leadership in the churches ‘standardized’ the text of the Pauline corpus in the light of ‘orthodox’ views and practices, suppressing and even destroying all deviant texts and manuscripts.  Thus it is that we have no manuscripts dating from earlier than the third century; thus it is that all of the extant manuscripts are remarkably similar in most of their significant features; and thus it is that the manuscript evidence can tell us nothing about the state of the Pauline literature prior to the third century.

Although Hays complains:

I imagine someone like Hays would be disgruntled if we entertain both options since at this point the evidence would be compatible with either, right? Do we have to be dogmatic either way? 

Holding seems to think we do:

I don't see anyone claiming that there MUST have been interpolations. The skeptical case (as far as I can piece it together from Price, Bart Ehrman, and Carrier) seems to be: 

1.  We know such things did happen later (when it is easy to prove with manuscript evidence). 

2.  Inference to naturalism implying more modest starting conditions to any given religious movement. 

3.  Obvious political and/or religious motives given the ubiquity of such human politics. 

4.  Opportunity and our ignorance one way or the other in key early stages. 

5.  How much is on the line to believe otherwise (a worldview is making a pitch to the rest of the world). 

So, it is reasonable to assume that there *probably* were (as in at least more likely than not) and that there's no compelling reason to suppose we can rest assured there weren't.  This argument has the most force given 2 combined with 5 and it only has meaning when Christians in a positive sense wish to assert their arbitrary confidence that their religion *didn't* get tweaked in important ways when no one was looking. 

So apart from a much larger worldview and personal context, the skeptical argument doesn't seem to have much compelling force on the spot.  If this were just some random academic question between two professors of historical magic in a world filled with legitimate magical claims and we wanted to happen to know about particular instances in history where particular individuals inflated their cases, there really wouldn't be a lot to work with.  We'd just shrug our shoulders and walk away it seems. 

Holding calls Walker's line of reasoning a "fallacy of association" (as in, just because kid x hangs out with pot heads doesn't necessarily mean he smokes pot, too) as though certainties are being presented.  It is logically possible that there were no interpolations (just like it is possible you hang out with potheads and don't join in) and I don't think Price, Walker, Carrier, or Ehrman would disagree with that (though your mom probably won't buy the "fallacy of association" defense).  Why does Holding feel the need to overstate the claim?  Is it because there's no defense against these mundane uncertainties?  

Davis says that Robert Price wants to make up for the lack of manuscript evidence:

Indeed, he would no longer have to argue, along with William G. Walker, that powerful and sinister forces in the Great Church around the year 300 made sure to suppress earlier texts of 1 Corinthians that did not include 15:3-11.

Robert Price, in response to Davis, says:

Hays seems to have his doubts:

Geisler has his doubts, too, and calls it implausible speculation:

...[Price's] argument from the adage that “history is written by the winners” (71) is implausible and contrary to fact. For this is not always true. Indeed, on the accepted dates of 1 Corinthians (A.D. 55-56) by even most critical scholars, Christianity was not a political winner. In fact, it was not a winner until centuries later.

Um...I think by "political winner" Price is talking about Christian sect on Christian sect action...not Christian sect on Pagan action.

Holding asserts:

And Hays complains:

At the very least, an elementary distinction needs to be drawn between the active destruction of extant writings and the failure to preserve them.

As though Carrier were psychic, in a footnote, in another chapter of ET (that book both Hays and Holding are responding to), Carrier partially agrees with Holding and makes that necessary "elementary distinction:"

Hays admits he has no imagination:

Cf. James Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles’ Creed),” Journal of Biblical Literature 101 (1982): pp. 5-37.

So unfortunately this "dialog" ends with a whole bunch of back and forth assertions and an even bigger reading list as though between 7 or so authors commenting we couldn't do better than that?  *sigh*

Outro:

I've been working on my review of The Empty Tomb off and on since 2007ish and have always been disappointed with the lack of detailed argument from either side.  Getting intimate and non-defensive interaction that clarifies the state of the evidence would be nice.  Let's hope we get somewhere with more info on the Carrier vs. Holding debate.

Ben

Colbert volunteered Fallon's money to a charity without asking and so Colbert said he'd sing the infamously bad "Friday" song if Fallon would come up with the money anyway.  And so, he did: 

Lots of things to be mad about today.  How about that government shutdown!?! 

The Daily Beast recounts:

Republicans, however, aren't willing to let the president paint himself as the only adult in Washington, [...]"Adults take seriously the crushing burden of debt Washington is leaving for our kids and grandkids," says [...]a senior aide to Speaker John Boehner. "That's why Republicans are fighting for meaningful spending cuts that will [...] produce a better environment for job creation in America."

Too bad: "produce a better environment for job creation" = "make it easy for rich people to keep screwing everyone over." That's very "adult" and certainly leaves the rich kids with a bright future to look forward to. Think of the rich children!

Therefore, "down with the rich man!"?  Or perhaps there's a conception of society out there that both promotes the free market and protects people from the excesses of greed?  No wai...  Where's that conversation?

Here are some excerpts from a book I'm reading:

More often, though, finding the right balance between our competing values is difficult.[...]

Unfortunately, too often in our national debates we don’t even get to the point where we weigh these difficult choices. Instead, we either exaggerate the degree to which policies we don’t like impinge on our most sacred values, or play dumb when our own preferred policies conflict with important countervailing values. Conservatives, for instance, tend to bristle when it comes to government interference in the marketplace or their right to bear arms. Yet many of these same conservatives show little to no concern when it comes to government wiretapping without a warrant or government attempts to control people’s sexual practices. Conversely, it’s easy to get most liberals riled up about government encroachments on freedom of the press or a woman’s reproductive freedoms. But if you have a conversation with these same liberals about the potential costs of regulation to a small-business owner, you will often draw a blank stare.

[...]Union representatives can’t afford not to understand the competitive pressures their employers may be under.

Who wrote that?  You can have a cookie if you guess correctly.  Here's a hint: It's not a Republican.

Theodore Beale (Vox Day) deals with the problem of evil by proposing a lesser god most Christians wouldn't accept.  The only reason he seems to believe in theism at all is because he believes evil is so darn real (the exact opposite reaction many atheists have, see my extensive argument map on "The Logical Problem of Evil"). William Lane Craig, as I recall in the debate with Sam Harris, made the "evil therefore God" argument as well (in addition to falling victim to the same definitional circularity issue that Beale does which I noted that Harris successfully used against Craig ftw). 

I only had Beale's pre-debate comments before, but now he's posted his reaction to the debate:

No, we cannot simply accept that "moral" can reasonably be considered "well-being" because it is not true to say that which is "of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong" is more than remotely synonymous with "that which fosters well-being in one or more human beings." One might as reasonably substitute "wealth" or "physical attractiveness" for "well-being".

Of course, Harris already addressed this point in the debate itself when discussing how we can be wrong about the facts of well being and noting that it is possible to not know what we are missing when it comes to deeper virtues.  So if you arbitrarily substitute in "wealth" or "physical attractiveness" you have not actually provided a "just as good" account of the human condition on its own terms. 

On any other day of the week (when not trying to desperately seize morality for only their worldview) Christians will make haste to deride the superficial life of the heathen based on trite interests like looks and money (the exact things Beale uses as "alternatives") and brag about the unending blessings of the deeper Christian virtues that unrepentant sinners would agree with them about if only they would have faith and be obedient to their god's commands.  But they can't have it both ways.  We live in the same universe with the same facts of basic psychology as the same species.  Faith and gods are not required to understand the human condition when all you need is experience with those virtues on their own terms.  Some unseen divine nature has nothing necessarily to do with it and this is a millions times more easy to verify than anything important about Craig's or Beale's differing conceptions of gods.

So is Vox Day just that shallow in a morally Dunning-Kruger effect kind of way or is he being a defensive hypocrite who conveniently refuses to devote his whole brain to the conversation about morality at the same time when his views are threatened?  Either way is pretty pathetic. 

Ben

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

---

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