I am a bit of a fan of Stepen Law. I like his style, and I greatly enjoyed his Philosophy Gym. So when I heard that he was due to debate arch Christian apologist William Lane Craig, my hopes were high. Sadly, I was never likely to be able to attend in person, so I have had to make do with the audio recording.
Craig makes his opening statement clearly enough. To be honest, I could not help feeling he was on shaky ground from the outset. His argument against the reality of infinity is as applicable to an infinite God as to an infinite Universe, and as inapplicable to a timeless naturalistic cause for the Universe as it is to a timeless God. The Cosmological Argument I have blogged about previously. Craig then made an argument from morality that assumed the existence of objective morality, and closed with an argument on the Resurrection.
Disappointingly, Law failed to engage with most of what Craig said, and in particular with the Cosmological Argument. Instead, he focussed on one of his own pet theories, the 'Evil God' argument.
As the debate progressed, however, the positions seemed to reverse. Law presented some justification for ignoring the Cosmological argument - that he was arguing against Craig's god in particular, not any conceivable God. Although I would not take the line of argument Law did on morality (that objective morality probably exists, even though he can't explain it), Law managed to point out that Craig's argument was invalid. And Craig seemed either to misunderstand or avoid Law's Evil God argument.
To expand on that last point, Law's argument was that the existence of an evil God is disproved by the evidence of the world around us; and that since almost exactly symmetrical arguments can be made for the existence of a good God, we can equally strongly conclude that a good God also does not exist. Craig repeatedly argued against a different claim, that the evil God undermines Christian claims to be able to prove the existence of a good God via observation of the world. In other words, Craig is making a direct argument for the non-existence of Craig's god; Craig is pointing out that Law's claim does not undermine a separate argument. Craig's claim that animals do not 'really' feel pain was dangerously close to solipsism.
On the Resurrection, Law again engaged in a way I would not have - he took a Humean line that denied the possibility of miracles, whereas I would not like to rule them out as a principle; instead, I would have looked at the evidence and noted that in this instance it seems particularly weak. Craig, on the other hand, used a rather circular claim that the miracle claims made for Jesus prove the Resurrection claims made for him.
On the whole, I thought Law carried the debate; but there were a number of missed opportunities to really put Craig to the sword.
No comments:
Post a Comment