I thought that I would summarize a debate that occurred at Cambridge University between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Arif Ahmed. Craig is by far the foremost defender of Christianity in the world, and Ahmed won his previous debate against the venerable Dr. Gary Habermas by a landslide. Could Dr. Ahmed repeat his previous victory?
The full MP3 is here. (H/T Brian Auten of Apologetics 315)
Craig’s opening speech is in the previous post. I am sorry but I cannot help but inject a little snark into my summaries of atheist speeches. I apologize in advance for being snarky. The snark is in italics.
And here is my summary of Dr. Ahmed’s first opening speech: (22:10)
Rebuttal to Craig’s case for God.
0) Craig is wrong about faith and reason (25:20)
– Craig’s book Reasonable Faith, he makes a number of statements about faith and reason
– He writes that Christianity is not accountable to reason if reason goes against Christianity
– He writes that the truth of Christianity is knowable without rational arguments
– He writes that even if there are no reasons to believe, and many reasons to disbelieve, humans are still obligated to believe
– Question for Craig: is Christianity reasonable or isn’t it? Do reasons matter or don’t they?
1) Response to Craig’s first argument: the origin of the universe (28:27)
– what mathematicians say about the contradictory nature of subtraction and division for actual infinities is wrong
– what cosmologists and physicists say about the beginning of time is wrong, every event follows another one, there is no first event
– even if the universe is 15 billion years old, the act of Creation requires time and there was no time prior to the supposed beginning of the universe for God to act in
– the cause of the universe need not be a personal agent
– all minds are made of matter so a mind cannot be the cause of the universe, because all the people who pre-suppose materialism like me think that minds must be made of matter
– it is impossible for a person to act outside of time, because all the persons I know act in time
– why did God wait 15 billion years before creating humans and relating to them? – i wouldn’t have done it that way
2) Response to Craig’s second argument: the fine-tuning of the creation (32:38)
– where do these probabilities that Craig is using come from?
3) Response to Craig’s third argument: the moral argument (34:07)
– I have personal preferences about what counts as right and wrong, and they are superior to God’s preferences
– moral intuitions are not a good way of discovering objective moral values, so therefore objective moral values don’t exist
4) Response to Craig’s fourth argument: the resurrection (36:00)
– the number of eyewitnesses is not enough, because groups number of eyewitnesses can be fooled by illusions, as in David Copperfield illusions
– the Gospels contradict themselves, e.g. – the story of Matthew’s earthquake and walking dead isn’t in Mark – so that’s a contradiction, so the Gospels are not reliable sources for Craig’s 3 minimal facts
5) Response to Craig’s fourth argument: personal experience (37:30)
– there are many different religious experiences because there are many different religions
– if lots of people disagree about something, then no one can be right
Ahmed’s case against God.
1) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence (39:00)
– if there is are no reasons to believe in God, then this alters reality to make it true that he doesn’t exist
2) The inductive argument from evil (40:04)
– some evil is gratuitous – events cause people to suffer, and has no benefit that I can see, based on my limited knowledge in time and space and my personal preference of what counts as a benefit and what doesn’t
– God would not have allowed people to suffer, because God’s job is to make us feel happy in this life
3) Belief in God makes people evil (41:52)
– all genuinely religious people are very immoral, according to my personal preferences about what counts as right and wrong
Please only comment on the content of Dr. Ahmed’s arguments, there will be a poll at 6 PM to vote in and then you can comment on who is winning, too. This was a very entertaining debate to listen to, and the audio is crystal clear! If I get lots of comments, I summarize the rest of the debate for Friday!
In case you are wondering about his inductive argument from evil, please read this summary on the problems of evil and suffering, which is taken from my list of arguments for and against Christian theism. Keep in my mind that I am a software engineer with two degrees in computer science… not philosophy!
Craig mentions a paper by the late William P. Alston of Syracuse University in his rebuttal to the inductive problem of evil. The paper lists six limitations on human cognitive capacities that make it difficult for humans to know that some instance of apparently gratuitous evil really is gratuitious – that God has no morally sufficient reason for permitting this specific instance of evil. Since Ahmed is making the claim that some evil is gratuitous, he bears the burden of proof.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Even atheists do not believe that minds are made of matter. They think they’re made of energy. It’s kind of the same thing, but…not really.
Regarding Ahmed’s digs against old earth creationism, our own experiences show us that time is relative. When we go to sleep and then wake up, it’s a much different experience from being locked (awake) in a jail cell for eight hours. In my mind, old earth creationism isn’t necessarily much different from the young earth idea that God sped up time or created a mature universe. (I still tend to think that the Big Bang is bogus, though.)
I think Craig makes a mistake when he suggests that people have a moral duty to believe in Jesus, or in God, or whatever. Believing in Jesus is not an inherently moral act. (You could call it “moral” just because God says to believe in Jesus and belief is therefore a form of obedience, but it’s still different from all other types of moral obedience.) Believing in Jesus is an external matter of grace, not a matter of morality. If you believe, then you do *not* get what you deserve. If you fail to believe, then you do get what you deserve — but not because you violated a moral duty to believe.
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Drew, I think your last paragraph may be trying to draw too fine a distinction. Here’s why: All moral obligation and failure relates to who God is and how we respond. Adam and Eve failed to subjigate themselves to God, desiring upon temptation to “be like God, knowing good and evil.” And in some sense they succeeded, and in some sense, the serpent told the truth. But in another sense, they were very unlike God. They knew evil experientially. God never does. All sin is very like this, placing our own egos or desires over and against God’s revealed will, which is also written on our hearts. It’s because we don’t believe in God.
(small aside for non-Drews, because I know he knows this but want to be clear for the onlooker: Even Satan “believes in” God and Jesus. Wrapped up in saving belief is repentance and the lordship of Jesus
Of course Jesus is the clearest revelation not only of the grace and love of God, but also of God Himself! “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Moreover, Jesus is the lord of all creation. He is the Lord of this created being, this creature, and every creature who has ever been or ever will be. We owe Him whether we like it or not. To fail to acknowledge that is, I think, itself a moral failure, which ultimately reveals itself in a lot of other things which we call sin.
Ahmed point 0: Is it me, or is he really really REALLY hoping that his audience is only half listening here? He quotes 3 sentences out of Craig’s book, but w/o context, presents himself as establishing context, and creates out of thin air a conclusion that is non sequitor.
“Even though we are given no good reason to believe and many persaussive reasons to disbelieve, even then the disbeliever has no excuse because the ultimate reason he does not believe is because he has rejected the Holy Spirit.”
Dr. Craig is making a conditional statement by way of argument. It is not presenting the *fact* that there are not good reasons to believe, he is presenting the initial conditions of the conditional statment in the form of EVEN IF (but not assumed) THEN.
I found this insulting, and off putting, and got me off to a bad start with Dr. Ahmed, and I’m a sucker for an accent. The only way he could think this would work is that a) his audience is completely ignorant of basic Christian tenets AND b) too stupid to follow a simple conditional statement.
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I don’t agree that saving belief involves submission to Jesus. And in fact, Ahmed did a decent job of debunking the idea that there’s anything inherently moral about believing in Jesus. Romans 2:12 makes it relatively clear that many pagans are condemned, not for rejecting Jesus, but for sinning in ways that they should know are wrong. If you were correct, Ahmed would have a good point, but you’re not correct, so he doesn’t.
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“but you’re not correct, so he doesn’t. ” I will grant that you may well be correct in saying that, but it surely doesn’t help me. Further explaination would be helpful.
I’d say much more, but I suspect that there’s some part of what Ahmed said that I haven’t heard yet which you’re attributing to me. It would probably be edifying for me to further finish and put it in that context.
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If you essentially equate “Believe in Jesus” with “Love God and be a moral person,” then God is asking the impossible. Belief in Jesus is definitely rational, but nonetheless, for some people it takes a great deal of searching to sift through the lies. And for some people, believing in Jesus is actually *impossible* because they’ve never even heard about Jesus. But at least theoretically, a wild unchurched savage in Africa could live his life as a good person. (It’s just that no one does, except arguably young children.)
So the whole hiddenness of God problem is reduced when you admit that God’s moral standards are distinct from belief in Jesus. The revelation of Jesus has been hidden from some people. But God’s morality, for the most part, has not. And to the extent that God’s morality *is* objectively hidden, Paul suggested that God won’t hold people accountable for those parts of it.
And although I don’t think God holds people accountable simply for failing to believe in Jesus (e.g., if they’ve never been told the gospel), God will nonetheless hold them accountable for their moral violations — even if they have a good excuse for not believing in Jesus (i.e., even if they’ve never heard about him).
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Ahmed’s point 1) shows a distinct weakness in math and physics:
Infinity, just like the square root of -1, is a theoretical construct useful for mathematical models. They do not exist in the real world. Further, his postulation that the universe is infinite shows he’s not familiar with this argument or his hope that his audience is ignorant of it.
He also shows that he doesn’t understand the interrelation between matter, space, and time. Before there were things moving, there was no time. It lacked definition. Those things are absolutely inseperable.
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Reading and listening to the arguments and the debate in general, I wasn’t all that impressed. I was saddened by the lack of understanding and ignorance and general inarticulateness of the audience (I believe someone actually asked ‘what caused God?’ – that’s playschool philosophy. I expect better from the University of Cambridge).
I’ve never heard of Ahmed before; were his points hard hitting? Yes they were… if you haven’t read that much literature on the philosophy of religion – when I say that, I don’t mean to imply that Ahmed is ignorant – because he isn’t – what I mean is that for those listening his points will seem valid and devastating. Take point 0 for example:
0) Ahmed’s point that Craig dismisses logic in the face of unwavering belief is disingenuous. Alvin Plantinga has done sterling work in the field of Christian epistemology, and specifically what he calls Reformed Epistemology; Craig subscribes to this type of epistemology. Craig, like all philosophers, makes use of logic to construct viable arguments for the existence of God: to be valid they have to logically follow: that’s the basis of apologetics; however, theistic beliefs have a positive epistemic value that goes beyond logical proofs – that’s what Craig means when he says he believes despite logical proofs: God has a personal relationship to him, just like when believers say they ‘felt the love of God’ – why should they disavow that positive experience because of an atheistic logical proof? That’s Craig’s point, and it’s a valid one. Ahmed either didn’t cotton on to the nuances of that point, or he was being disingenuous.
1) I’m baffled by this. I remember reading an essay a very long time ago that dealt with agency in creation; principally theistic debaters argue that personal will is necessary for effecting contingencies when the agent is necessary; Ahmed says it needn’t be personal, but my understanding of the literature suggests that necessity begets necessity, i.e., a necessary ‘thing’ (an impersonal cause) would effect a necessary universe, but the universe isn’t necessary; philosophers resolve that through agency. Ahmed didn’t give me any reason to discount that.
Does anybody actually think minds are matter? The implication is that brains are minds – I don’t know of anyone that states that? My understanding of philosophy of mind is that there’s a debate over whether the mind is necessarily or contingently linked to the brain: when I say ‘I’m happy’ I don’t mean ‘my brain is happy’ – that’s the distinction between the self/I and our body; it may be the case that our minds are necessarily linked (the materialist position) but you can’t extrapolate from that – if you do maintain that – that therefore a disembodied person (God) cannot logically exist – how if that not flawed induction? Is it logically impossible for minds to be independent from matter? I don’t think any philosopher – materialist or otherwise – would say that.
Lastly the point about causation – again from reading an essay many moons ago, it seems that the burden of proof is on the atheist to say that a Being in timelessness can’t effect something in time, or indeed time itself. Where has Ahmed shown that?
Ahmed isn’t qualified to argue against the resurrection: he’s not schooled in Biblical history, so a facile rejection of testimony on the basis of illusion simply won’t do. He’s best of sticking to the philosophy, leave the history for someone else. I don’t understand his point on personal experience either.
I don’t think Ahmed was particularly good. To be honest I’m annoyed and irritated. I’m annoyed and irritated because people actually think Ahmed ‘devastated’ Craig’s arguments… when will people give the props Craig’s deserve as the greatest apologist of the 20th century? His arguments and his debates are some of the best in the discipline. There are outstanding atheist philosophers and I’ve seen many of them give Craig a run for his money (have a look at a debate between Craig & Quentin Smith); but Ahmed isn’t one of the ‘great’ atheist philosophers.
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