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The God Debate II - Harris vs. Craig

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqaHXKLRKzg

Overview

"Is Good from God?", the second Notre Dame "God Debate", held on 7 April 2011. William Lane Craig argued the moral argument: if God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist; they do exist; therefore God exists. Sam Harris, fresh from The Moral Landscape, argued that morality is about the well-being of conscious creatures, that this is a matter of fact open to science, and that the god of the Bible is a poor candidate for the source of anything good.

Notes

  • Craig's complaint, repeated in every rebuttal, was that Harris had not addressed his two premises, and it is fair as far as it goes: Harris gave a lecture rather than a rebuttal, including a long and effective passage on Hell that Craig correctly identified as off-topic. It was also the most memorable part of the evening, which tells you something about debate scoring.
  • The substantive problem for Craig is the Euthyphro dilemma, which Harris raised and Craig answered with the usual relocation: goodness is grounded in God's nature. That does not answer it; it moves it. My reasons for rejecting the first premise are in the moral argument note and in Objective morality.
  • Harris's own position has a gap he has never closed: "well-being" is doing the work that "God" does for Craig, and the is–ought step from facts about well-being to the claim that we ought to maximise it is asserted, not shown. I agree with Harris about what morality is for and disagree that this makes it objective; see Moral claims are incomplete assertions.
  • Both men are at their best here and the debate is worth the two hours for that reason alone. Craig is the better debater; Harris is, I think, closer to right, and the gap between those two facts is the subject of Steelmanning.

Also see