Luke Barnes Exposed

I have been on Luke Barnes' case for years, trying to get him to admit to being a believer who is using his scientific credentials to drive a theistic agenda.  He's been slippery and difficult, maintaining a vestige of plausible deniability while pushing the "god did it" conclusion to the fine-tuning problem (or at least doing the opposite of damning with faint praise - perhaps praising with faint critique).

I have been listening to his interview on Pale Blue Dot and was ready to release a careful analysis of how he gave away his theism that day, but … there is now an even better example available.

Luke Barnes and Geraint F Lewis have released a book on fine-tuning and it would appear that while both agree that fine-tuning is a thing, a phenomenon that is worth considering, they disagree on the conclusions that we should draw from it.  There was no need for me to waste money on buying the book, since Google Books provided enough data to support my case.

On page 348, in the chapter "A Discussion Continued", there is this passage:

Geraint (continuing from page 347 which is not available, I've guessed the last word on that missing page): (To) you, the apparent fine-tuning of the properties of the Universe, the properties that allow you to exist as a living, thinking, active creature, is not an accident, not some random role of the dice in an inflating cosmology. To you, the conditions were chosen; the dials were explicitly set to allow your existence.

This universe contains good things, like free moral agents and all that they can do and learn and appreciate. The presence of these qualities is not accidental, but reflects the intent of the creator, the person who set the dials. How’s that?

Luke: That's about right. But I feel that you don’t buy the argument.

Geraint: Alas, I don't. I think that moral beliefs have arisen through our evolution and allowed us to survive and thrive in communities and clans. Anyway, all people appear to be a little amoral sometimes!

Luke: Don't confuse the question of how we got our moral beliefs with the question of what they are about. I got my eye-balls from evolutionary processes as well, but I believe them when they tell me that there's a tree over there. And certainly, knowing what is right to do is no guarantee of doing what is right. We aren't perfectly moral, but I think that we know enough to be able to think rationally about the idea of a morally perfect, necessary being.

So, after years of being coy, Luke has finally admitted to being a theist.

While I am happy about this admission, since it vindicates my suspicions regarding his motives over the years, it's a bit sad that I didn't manage to put out my claim that he had already accidentally admitted to being a theist back in 2010.  Then again, on the other hand, the piecing together of his accidental admission could easily have been waved aside by Barnes if he hadn't already tipped his hand in his book.

It is strange that Barnes, who obviously thinks that fine-tuning is an important topic, important enough to write a book about it, should give an interview for more than an hour on that topic (to Luke Muehlhauser) and then not mention that interview on his blog at all.  Barnes was mentioned in The Economist and that was worthy of a post on his blog, why not the podcast interview with Muehlhauser?

My answer is that in that podcast, 11 Responses to Fine-Tuning, Barnes accidentally admitted that he is a theist - a fact that, at the time, he did not want to be widely known.

The gaffe starts at about 60:04.

In the section prior (from 59:27), Barnes talks about a universe created by the god of WLC and says that "if that sort of universe is the way it really is", and then states that the right answer to existential musings (a long string of "why" questions, in which intention is presumed) would involve god.  Barnes claims that "this sort of idea is not an ad hoc idea" and launches into a quote from Saint Augustine; "in '(t)he ordinary course of nature in the whole of creation [will have] certain natural laws ... determining for each thing what it can do or not do'."

(Barnes had previously written out this quote in an article on the "Religion and Ethics" section of the ABC news site, a piece about the then upcoming debate between WLC and Lawrence Krauss.  The original translation of Augustine from which Barnes appears to be quoting reads: "The ordinary course of nature in the whole of creation has certain natural laws in accordance with which even the spirit of life, which is a creature, has its own appetites, determined in a sense, which even a bad will cannot elude. The elements of the physical world also have a fixed power and quality determining for each thing what it can do or not do and what can be done or not done with it.")

Then, from 60:04, Barnes says - "That's actually a quote from Saint Augustine in the 5th century AD.  So this is not an ad hoc idea that we came up with when we were faced with science.  That believers came up with."  Here he slipped up and accidentally revealed that he counts himself among the group "believers".

If only I had been aware of this earlier.  I would have been bashing him with it for years.

Oh well, at least he has finally come clean.  Will that put his Templeton at risk?

I ask this a little tongue in cheek, because it's quite interesting what authors he recommends to the podcast's listeners:

·      Paul Davies (Templeton winner)

·      Martin Rees (Templeton winner)

·      John D Barrow (Templeton winner)

·      John Leslie (Philosopher of Religion who Barnes suggests is a theist, although he's normally described as a pantheist, Leslie was involved in one event with Templeton - the same event that Richard Dawkins was involved with)

·      Barrow and Tipler (Barrow per above, the less said about Tipler the better)

·      George Ellis (Templeton winner, more recently a positive reviewer of Barnes' new book)

·      Robin Collins (theistic philosopher who has had two grants from Templeton to work on fine-tuning, also a positive reviewer of Barnes' book), and

·      William Lane Craig (not so involved with Templeton, or with fine-tuning come to mention it)

The involvement of Richard Dawkins at a Templeton workshop (Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life and Its Theological Implications) is odd.  Admittedly it was in 1998, well before "The God Delusion" (2008), but well after "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design" (1986, although the paperback edition was published in 1996), so while it was a decade before the beginning of the "Four Horsemen" idea, and "New Atheism" (and four years before the "brights" movement kicked off), it was also a decade after Dawkins had written against the notion of a god.  Why was Richard Dawkins at a workshop hosted by the immensely rich god-botherers at Templeton?  Did he not know who they were?  Did he think that he could persuade them from their folly?  Was he tricked into attending?

What is quite amusing is that, when you search the Templeton website, there are three mentions of Dawkins (only two of which are negative) but a search for William Lane Craig comes up blank, despite WLC's three exemplary essay awards and his various lectureships with Templeton, plus his attendance at the St. Thomas University Summer Seminar program together with Luke Barnes last year.  Luke Barnes gets one mention regarding the grant he got from them in 2015 to do two and a half years' work on fine-tuning.  The description of that project ends with this line:

Theology, too, has embraced fine-tuning as part of “natural theology … the pursuit of a thorough understanding of the intelligible tightly-knit structure of the world that science discerns” (Polkinghorne).

This is a strange comment, is it not, when the grant is filed under "Mathematical and Physical Sciences", rather than under the "Philosophy and Theology" category.  Well, it was odd … until Barnes revealed himself to be a theist.

The Problem with Sam (The Final Prelude)

I’m going to let you into an open secret.

Atheists, along with scientists and academics, disagree with each other.

I happen to disagree with Sam Harris about a thing or two, which I will get to shortly, but I also disagree with a number of other atheists on various things.  For example, I think that Richard Dawkins should try to keep his cool a little more and that his arrogant pose isn’t helpful.  I do sympathise with his plight, since he’s an evolutionary biologist and it must eventually get on one's nerves to be continually told by ignorant amateurs that your life work is bollocks because a musty old book contains, along with a raft of ridiculous claims that no-one holds to be true anymore, a barely coherent alternative.

I recently got slightly singed (I won’t say burnt, that would be over-doing it) after straying too close to a heated academic battle, complete with two opposing factions steadfastly failing to agree on the Bertrand Paradox.

So disagreement happens.  However, since I am not a monochromatic type, just because I think that Sam is wrong about one thing this should not necessarily lead to thinking that he must therefore be wrong about everything.  He’s a perfectly pleasant, erudite and genial chap who has a lot of interesting things to say.  It’s just that he has said a couple of things that are somewhat less brilliant.

The first, of course, is the little joke (if that’s what it was) about William Lane Craig putting the wind up atheists – made in opening statements in a debate against the very same William Lane Craig.  Craig is irritating and devious, but he’s not frightening by any stretch of the imagination.  Even if Craig’s ability to lie barefaced is one of the characteristics one normally associates with a psychopath, the likelihood of WLC being a psychopath is probably not high and hence he is (probably) not that frightening.

The second thing is what truly and deeply annoyed me with his book, “The Moral Landscape”.   In many ways this is a very good book, the mission associated with it is laudable (that is not a typo, I meant “laudable”, not “laughable”).  But in my view, the book would have been an excellent book if he had not made what I consider to be a massive and unnecessary concession to the theist camp.

In his book, and in his debates, Sam repeatedly insists that there is such a thing as objective morality.  He does this even when debating with philosophers and apologists.  The problem is that there isn’t objective morality, not even in Sam’s world – at least not in the sense that most philosophers and apologists would interpret the term.

I discussed objective moral values and duties in WLC3: When Morality Arguments are Bad because Craig asserts that objective moral values and duties exist.  It is clear in his supporting arguments that by these terms he means the moral values and duties that derive from an absolute morality, which supposedly originate in the essential nature of his god.  If something is morally wrong, it is always morally wrong irrespective of the circumstances.  One would expect also that if something is morally acceptable then it’s always morally acceptable irrespective of the circumstances.  Objective morality is usually more the preserve of theologians even though it creates problems for the types of people who base their world view on what is written in ancient documents.  If the Bible were to reflect the objective morality of an eternal god, then homosexuality should still be morally abhorrent and incurring the death penalty while slavery should still be morally acceptable (while homosexuality still attracts the death penalty in some nations, to the best of my knowledge none support slavery).

A careful read of The Moral Landscape reveals that Sam doesn’t mean anything like this by his use of the term “objective morality”.  Instead, what he means is something that could, if the term were not already taken, be called “moral relativism”.

I suspect that a major contributor to Sam’s attempts to avoid being seen as being any sort of moral relativist is the fact “moral relativism”, and the related “moral subjectivism”, seem to have almost as bad a rap in the US as “atheism” has – no doubt due in part to the fact that they are associated with secularism.  Moral relativism is charged with a number of crimes: for example being a form of moral nihilism (in which nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral), being incoherent in a number of senses (including self-refutation) and so on.

Clearly Sam doesn’t want to be associated with moral nihilists.

In his book, Sam doesn’t really spend much time addressing what he means by moral relativism, but the clearest indication is found in a section of Chapter One titled “Moral Blindness in the Name of ‘Tolerance’”.  Sam describes a form of moral abdication in which liberal Westerners tacitly condone all manner of horrendous acts because they are carried out in the context of another culture.  It is a mixture of cowardice and cultural shame that leads to tolerance where tolerance is unwarranted.

While it’s understandable that Sam wants to be associated with neither moral nihilists nor the idiot extreme of moral cowardice generally labelled as “moral relativism”, he should not want to be associated with moral absolutists and for that reason he should avoid using the term “objective morality”.

If I understand his intent correctly, Sam uses the term “objective” in the same sense that a scientist would use “objective” measures to ascertain the success or failure of an experiment.  For example, an objective measure for the success of an experiment on the efficacy of prayer on cancer would involve standard recovery rates for various types of cancer, the involvement of a control group, measures of sample sizes to ascertain margins of error and a statistical analysis could then say, for example, that if positive effects were observed in 10 more patients who were prayed for than in the control group, then there is a statistically significant effect.  Either you get that number (or more) and prayer might work, or you don’t and prayer probably doesn’t work.  You actually get a slightly higher proportion of complications in people who know that they have been prayed for, probably because they don’t take as good care of themselves, leaving their recovery up to a god who either doesn’t exist or doesn’t get involved in health issues, or maybe they are nervous about the fact that whenever science looks for god, he never turns up.

A subjective measure might be to use the responses, from the recipients of prayer, to a question about whether they felt better as a result of having been prayed for.

Objective measures used in scientific research are not absolute and in fact almost everything we measure is relative in one way or another.  In this sense, Sam’s suggested “objective morality” is actually relative – relative to the two extremes he describes: a world of unrelenting suffering and a world of maximal well-being.  If an act results in a move towards more suffering, it’s bad.  If an act results in a move towards more well-being, it’s good.

Can I suggest the use of another term altogether, perhaps “rational morality”?  I suggest this option because despite Sam’s protestations, there is no “objective morality” that science can discover.  Instead, what we can say is that rational maximisation of well-being is a suitable basis on which to build a moral framework (or an ethical structure) and that science can be used to determine which acts tend towards maximising well-being, via neuroscience and so forth.

-------------------------------

Some of you might ask “what is this ethical structure of which you speak?”

I’m so glad that you asked.

Over the next few months, I shall be posting a series of articles taken from a document that I first started working on many years ago.  These will culminate in a smaller number of articles in which I discuss a proposed model for representing the ethical structures in which we all operate.

The first of those articles is The Moral Animal.  The previous two preludes are Saving the Dog and Being Bad.

The Real Winners?

Given this NY Times article - which says:

Christian conservatives … lost fights against same-sex marriage in all four states where it was on the ballot, and saw anti-abortion-rights Senate candidates defeated and two states vote to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

and quotes R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as saying:

It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed. An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.

Perhaps the real winners of the 2012 Presidential Election are these guys:
 

(http://thunderf00tdotorg.wordpress.com/)

(I know that dead people often vote in US elections, but not often do they have as much impact as Hitch did.)

WLC2: Cosmological Argument ("God Did It") - FAIL

In earlier articles, I looked at William Lane Craig’s debating style (in Debatable Theism) and the logic in his “logical” arguments (in The Logic of an Apologist).  In the latter, I said that I would address the content of Craig’s arguments, please check that article if you are not already familiar with the logical forms.  This article addresses what I have numbered as Craig’s Second Argument – note that in presenting this argument Craig did not claim the he was proving the Christian God (but it is clearly something compatible).  First a quick recap:

Craig's Second Argument – Cosmological Argument from First Cause
(argued during Craig-Law – wording taken from Craig-Krauss)

1.    Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2.    The universe began to exist.

3.    Therefore, the universe has a cause.

This is a simple syllogism.

1.    Major Premise – Everything that begins to exist (All M) has a cause (P).

2.    Minor Premise – The universe (S) falls into the category of “Everything that begins to exist” (All M).

3.    Conclusion – Therefore, the universe (S) has a cause (P).

Note that this is not the entirety of Craig’s argument, since he doesn’t tend to stop with “a cause” but rather extends it out to an “uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe”.  This is Craig’s argument in his words:

Now from the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe. It must be uncaused because we’ve seen that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless and therefore changeless, at least without the universe, because it created time. Because it also created space, it must transcend space as well and therefore be immaterial, not physical.

Now there are only two possible candidates that could fit such a description: either an abstract object, like a number, or an unembodied mind or consciousness. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations. The number seven, for example, can’t cause anything! Therefore, it follows that the transcendent cause of the universe is an unembodied mind. And thus we are brought, not merely to an Uncaused Cause of the universe, but to its Personal Creator.

Here is my attempt to eke out the logic involved:

1.     Premise 1 – If something created the universe (A) then whatever created the universe must have created time and space (B).

2.     Premise 2 – If something created time and space (B) then that something must have existed before the existence of time (C1) and outside space (C2).

3.     Premise 3– If anything existed before the existence of time (C1) then that thing must be timeless (D).

4.     Premise 4 – If something is timeless (D) then it must be changeless as well as timeless (E)

5.     Premise 5 – If something is outside space (C2) then it must be immaterial (F).

6.     Premise 6 – If something is immaterial (F) then it must be an abstract object (G1) or an unembodied mind or consciousness (G2).

7.     Premise 7 – If something is able to create something (a generalisation of A) then that something cannot be an abstract object (not G1).

8.     Assertion 1 – Something created the universe (A).

9.     Conclusion 1 – Therefore, the something that created the universe is changeless as well as timeless (E), immaterial (F) and an unembodied mind or consciousness (G2).

10. Premise 8 – If there cannot be an infinite regress of causes (X) then there must be an initial uncaused cause (Y).

11. Assertion 2 – There cannot be an infinite regress of causes (Z).

12. Conclusion 2 – Therefore, there must be an initial uncaused cause (Y).

13. Bonus Conclusion – Therefore, the uncaused, changeless, timeless, immaterial and unembodied mind or consciousness (from Conclusion 1 and Conclusion 2) is a Personal Creator (Bonus).

This might not be accurate, because I cannot claim to know the mind of William Lane Craig.  Premise 6 is a problem, but we have seen it before (addressed in the article about the Cosmological Argument from Contingency).  Assertion 1 is a problem too, since it begs the question somewhat but it's really just part of the same problem exhibited in Premise 6 (the cause of the universe must be a thing, or a being, or a mind).

(Also, please note carefully that the Bonus Conclusion is not a logically valid conclusion since there are no premises which mention a Personal Creator from which the statement can be concluded.)

Fundamentally, this whole argument is just the Cosmological Argument from Contingency reworded for a specific purpose:

1.    Everything that exists has an explanation.

2.    The universe exists.

3.    Therefore, the universe has an explanation.

and for completeness, here is the Contingency argument as a First Cause argument

1.    Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2.    If the universe has a cause, that cause has certain characteristics.

3.    The universe exists.

4.    Therefore, the cause of the universe has certain characteristics.

So why have this separate argument, which is basically the same argument?

One reason is that Craig is trying to provide a cumulative argument for God.   Each argument, he thinks, provides an extra bit of support to his case.  So two arguments which are really the same argument worded differently appears like twice as much support.  Well, yes, but two times zero support remains zero support.

Another reason is that the cause of the universe remains firmly behind the curtain.  There is no further you can push a God of the Gaps argument.

But the actual reason for this rewording of the argument, from what I can determine, is that Craig hopes to circumvent the anthropic principle.  While this principle can be easily misunderstood, it simply points out that if the universe wasn't the way it is, then we'd not be here pondering why it is the way it is.  (We'd either be here wondering why it is the way it is, where the "way it is" would be different from the way it is, or we'd not be here at all.)  No matter how unlikely it might be that we are here, we are.  The universe is required for us to be here to be pondering at all.  Now, for the universe to be here, it is (as far as we can tell) also required to have had a beginning.

This is where Craig, yet again, uses conflation to confuse and distract. There is a logical, philosophical argument regarding requirement.  In this argument there is a logical requirement for the universe to exist so that we can be here to ponder why the universe exists and a philosophical requirement for the universe to have some sort of beginning at some time in the past in order to exist now.  Then there is a scientific, physics requirement for all effects to have a cause (or, more strictly, effects are required to have a nexus of causes and necessary conditions, but the shorthand "cause" is often used).

So, Craig uses these two ambiguities - is the requirement a philosophical requirement or a physics requirement and what is meant by "cause"?  Physics does not necessarily preclude a "causeless" universe - in so much as there may not be a single pre-existing point of causation, but rather only a cause or nexus of causes and necessary conditions which could only be identified retrospectively (if at all).  A scientifically minded person will agree, therefore, with the statement "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" within very narrow parameters.  What they will not agree with is "Everything that begins to exist must necessarily have a single point of consciously directed causation".

We need to reword the argument again to make it clear:

1.    Everything that begins to exist does so due to an event triggered by a nexus of causes and/or retrospectively necessary conditions.

2.    The universe began to exist.

3.    Therefore, the event which caused the beginning of the universe was triggered by a nexus of causes and/or retrospectively necessary conditions.

4.    (Bonus Conclusion) Therefore, God did it. 

Debatable Theism

There has been, in recent times, a phenomenon in Christian apologetics circles called William Lane Craig. Craig is a "Philosopher of Religion", although in his case that term is indistinguishable from "theologian".  His fame in philosophical circles derives largely from the relatively huge number of debates he has engaged in, largely but not exclusively with the non-believing.

Craig, a research professor at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University California, has also published a number books and papers and received a number of awards and honors.

I first stumbled across him in a debate with Sam Harris.  Harris made an extraordinary remark at the beginning of the debate:

(William Lane Craig is) the one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.

This was (probably) intended to reflect the fact that Craig had technically won all the debates he had previously had with non-believers.  What Harris failed to mention was that Craig won those debates in the same manner that debating teams win their championship matches.

It's worth reflecting for a moment on the nature of a championship debate.  The format is similar to that used in many (if not all) of Craig's debates, in which each side is allowed a set time to introduce the arguments for and against the Proposal, a short time for rebuttal and a shorter time for closing statements.  Sometimes an additional period in which each side may field questions from the audience is appended to the standard format.

The topic of a debate, in the context of championship, may be either fully prepared or partially prepared.  Whether the participants argue for or against a proposal is totally unrelated to the what positions they hold themselves.  For example, in the 1994 High School World Debating Championships, the debate topics were "Feminism has corrupted the family", "One superpower is better than two", "Technology has outstripped morality", "Hollywood has a lot to answer for", "Tourists are a global menace" and "Repression of civil rights justifies violent action".  It's quite possible that strident feminist students would have been required to argue that feminism had in fact corrupted the family, students deeply concerned about the possible abuses that a lone superpower might commit could argue that a lone superpower was better than two, etc, etc.

Craig and his opponents may well have debated on different topics, "God is a Delusion", "Does God Exist?", "Belief in God Makes Sense in Light of Tsunamis" (I'm serious, this was a debate topic!), but irrespective of the overarching topic, Craig consistently took the side on which he was supporting the existence of God, or the idea that morality derives from the existence of God.  Unlike the poor High School students, he was not required to publicly attempt a successful argument against a personally held position.  (Neither, so far as I can tell, were his opponents.)

Let us look at the subset of debates that Craig himself highlights.  I've used colour to indicate who the sponsor is (green for natural supporters of Craig, red otherwise) and who the first speaker is (again green for Craig, red otherwise).  Note that the list is in anti-chronological order:

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig - Stephen Law
Westminster Central Hall, London, United Kingdom – October 2011
Sponsor - Premier Christian Radio
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural?
William Lane Craig - Sam Harris
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States – April 2011
Sponsor - Center for Philosophy of Religion
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Is There Evidence For God?
William Lane Craig - Lawrence Krauss
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, – March 30, 2011
Sponsor - Campus Crusade for Christ
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?
William Lane Craig - Bart D. Ehrman
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States – March 28, 2006
Sponsor - unclear (but note the location, also note that the opponent is a New Testament scholar - he is self-described as an "agnostic" but he clearly states that he is not an atheist, as noted below I would characterise him as "a recovering Christian")
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Belief in God Makes Sense in Light of Tsunamis
William Lane Craig - AC Grayling
Oxford Union, United Kingdom – 2005
Sponsor - unclear (although the moderator is currently the Vicar of Bowdon Parish)
First Speaker - William Lane Craig 

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig  - Quentin Smith
Harvard Science Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States – April 2003
Sponsor - unclear
First Speaker - Quentin Smith (note not first debate with William Lane Craig and also the two wrote a book together)

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig  - Ingmar Persson
University of Lund, Sweden – March 18, 1999
Sponsor - Credo Lund (a Christian Student organisation)
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

The Existence of the Christian God
William Lane Craig - Edwin Curley
University of Michigan, Michigan, United States – February 5, 1998
Sponsor - Campus Crusade for Christ
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig - Massimo Pigliucci
University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States – 1998
Sponsor - "Issues Committee" (a comment by Massimo Pigliucci indicated only a few Rationalists in the crowd)
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig - Quentin Smith
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States – March 22, 1996
Sponsor - Philosophy Department (note the university)
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig - Douglas M. Jesseph
North Carolina State University, North Carolina, United States – 1996
Sponsor - appears to be Jesseph's university (ie North Carolina State University)
First Speaker - Douglas M. Jesseph

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig - Corey G. Washington
University of Washington, Washington, United States – February 1995
Sponsor - Campus Crusade for Christ
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig - Dr. Michael Tooley
University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United States – November 1994
Sponsor - appears to be Tooley's university (ie University of Colorado)
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
William Lane Craig - Ray Bradley
Simon Frasier University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada – 1994
Sponsor - appears to be Bradley's university (ie Simon Frasier University)
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

Is the Basis of Morality Natural or Supernatural?
William Lane Craig - Richard Taylor
Union College, Schenectady, New York, United States – October 8, 1993
Sponsor - unclear, but it should be noted that Taylor was a believer
First Speaker - Richard Taylor

Does God Exist?
William Lane Craig - Kai Nielsen
University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada – February 1991
Sponsor - unclear but seems to be Nielsen's home territory (Canada)
First Speaker - William Lane Craig

It appears that since 1996, Craig has been quite fortunate in his audience and his ability to speak first. This is not what one would expect in a true debating scenario, where the audience would be largely neutral in regard to the topic and the order of speakers would average out to something somewhat closer to 50-50, rather than (post 1996) 89-11.

I imply that his audience is positive when his sponsor is a Christian organisation because a sponsor has more control over advertising and so on, and has a motivation to stack the audience with people who agree with their cause.  This might be unfair, but I doubt it.  It was difficult to work out who the sponsors unless they were positive to Craig's cause because Craig appears not to acknowledge any other sorts of sponsors.  Anyway, this is another major deviation from the standard debate format.

While there are at least two major deviations from the debate format, being that Craig never has to argue against personally held beliefs and that he seems to have unfair advantages in audience and debating order, Craig still tends to claim victory when the debate is "won" in a debate like fashion.

A true debate is not necessarily won by the side who is strictly correct, for example, one could debate successfully for the forced sterilisation of red-headed children on the grounds that it will, in the long term, reduce bullying in schools but that would be a technical success, not necessarily an indication that it is in fact true that bullying in schools would be eventually eradicated along with the eradication of the gene for red hair.

Similarly, Craig's ability as a debater - in that he has a melodious voice, chiseled good-looks, overweening confidence and oratorial and rhetorical skills - means that he does generally win his debates technically.  What he does, however, is leave the listener with the same sense of distaste that one would get after witnessing a successful argument to have your children sterilised.

So what skills does Craig bring to the table?

He is adept at fallacious argument.  In an earlier article, I mentioned a couple raised at  Ethical Realism: false dilemma and reductio ad absurdum. Craig also uses appeal to emotion. An example is found in a post-debate discussion with Stephen Law in which Craig claims that a valueless universe is abhorrent. Even if this were true, being abhorrent hasn’t stopped things from existing. I don’t like earwigs, but they exist.

He tends to introduce terms without supporting that introduction.  There is an example in the debate with Lewis Wolpert (not one of Craig's favorites, apparently), version of which is quoted at Strong Atheism:

1. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.”
2. “The universe began to exist [because infinite time is impossible].”
3. “Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.”
4. “If the universe has a cause of its existence, then [we find that] an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”
5. “Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is “beginningless,” changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”

In the Wolpert debate, Craig argues (personally transcribed from the mp3 of the debate):

(initially quoting Alexander Vilenkin) "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning."

That problem was nicely captured by Anthony Kenny of the Oxford University, he writes "a proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing. But surely that doesn’t make sense because out of nothing, nothing comes!" Such a conclusion is in the words of philosopher of science Bernulf Kanitscheider, "is in head-on collision with the most successful ontological commitment" in the history of science, namely the principle out of nothing, nothing comes. So, why does the universe exist, instead of just nothing? where did it come from? There must have been a transcendent cause which brought the universe into being.

We can summarise our argument thus far as follows 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause, 2. The universe began to exist, 3. Therefore the universe has a cause.

Now, as the cause of space and time, this being must be an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial being of unfathomable power.  Moreover it must be personal as well. 

Why?  Well, because first of all this event must be beyond space and time. Therefore it cannot be physical or material.  Now there are only two kinds of things that fit that description.  Either abstract objects, like numbers, or an intelligent mind - but abstract objects cannot cause anything.  Therefore it follows that the cause of the universe is a personal, transcendent mind. 

Secondly, how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect like the universe?  If the cause were an impersonal set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never exist without its effect.  If the cause were permanently present, then the effect would be permanently present as well. The only way for the cause to be timeless and for the effect to begin in time, is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to create an event in time without any antecedent determining conditions.  And thus we are brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal creator.

The major challenge with this tract is to identify all the fallacies!  Staying with unsupported introduction of claims though, see if you can find any support for the claims of the cause being a being and of that being being personal.  There's an appeal to ignorance (how else would one make this argument?) along with the large serving of question begging.

There are appeals to authority, in this case masked authority.  He misquotes Anthony Kenny, who he presents without indicating what his expertise is (he's a philosopher of religion, sound familiar?) and without indicating that the quote dates from a book from 1969.  Even without the misquote (Kenny was talking about the matter in the universe, not the universe per se), the quote itself includes an appeal to ignorance.

Another skill which Craig tends to deploy is distraction, when he says something along the lines of “but let us leave all those problems aside”.   This apparently means “I’ve just raised something to distract you, but don’t think about it too deeply, because if you do you’ll see that my logic is full of holes”.  A good example exists in a piece about Richard Dawkins, while addressing Dawkins’ Critique of Design (see 4.5 here).

Firstly Craig argues that it is unnecessary to explain an explanation (ie if we find arrow heads in our garden, we can reach an explanation which includes some form of intelligent being which made them, without having to explain who or what they were or what they were doing in our garden). Then he argues against Dawkins' argument, namely that Intelligent Design is not elegant because the answer to everything provided by theists is at least as complex as the problems it supposedly solves. Craig says “A hypothesis that has, for example, broader explanatory scope may be less simple than a rival hypothesis but still be preferred because it explains more things. Simplicity is not the only, or even most important, criterion for assessing theories!” and then calls for the reader to leave “all those problems” aside.

He appears to do this because both his arguments against Dawkins fail (or at best are deceptive) if you take any time to review them.  In this particular for example, there is yet another fallacy, that associated with conflation, in that Craig conflates two meanings of "simple".  Nobody, including Dawkins, would argue with Craig's statement regarding hypotheses - because he's using simple in another sense than was obvious in Dawkins argument about elegance.

The creative use of ambiguity seems to be one of William Lane Craig's star turns - he uses it with belief (as argued here) and he uses it with the entirety of premise 1 of his three point moral argument for God (also argued here).  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that when countering Craig's arguments, Sam Harris and his fellow atheists should be very careful to dissect those arguments to ensure not only that they are free of fallacies (which, basically, they won't be) but also that Craig is truly arguing what he asserts to be arguing.

Often he won't.