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After action reports from William Lane Craig vs Lawrence Krauss debate in Sydney

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The first one is from blogger Stephen of ChristianFaith.com. (H/T Apologetics 315)

Excerpt:

William Lane Craig (WLC) attempted to deal with the main topic along classic logic paradigms (too much in my view), but Krauss (at times) was simply spoiling the dialogue with constant interruptions and diversions. In other words, he chose not to fight fair and intentionally landed some low blows.

[…]After that he gave us a useful dumbed-down materialist version of how the universe came into existence from ‘nothing’ and attacked Craig’s model for a transcendent beginning to the universe(s). An odd analogy (a reference to homosexuality) was used to counter Craig’s Kalaam cosmological argument but his 15 minutes were, overall, engaging, well-paced and entertaining. His personal style of humour was critical to his presentation as he freely admits that scientists within his own discipline of physics are often regarded as ‘obnoxious’ (his word, not mine).

In short, Krauss was confident, engaging, cocky and unconvincing re: the actual topic – ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’

Craig’s 15 minutes were a direct contrast to Krauss’s.

Craig relied on his written notes far more heavily than the free flowing style of Krauss and he presented his views on the topic with intense logic and refined public speaking skills. His constant reference to the Leibnizian cosmological argument firmly imprinted in my mind that Craig was firmly committed to the central topic and he did his expert best to convince us of it. For example, Krauss’s various concepts of ‘nothing’ has been the subject to much derision by some (not just theists) and Craig deliberately exposed Krauss’s inconsistencies by quoting Krauss himself! For example:

  • “There are a variety of forms of nothing, they all have various definitions.”
  • “The laws of quantum mechanics tells us that nothing is unstable.”
  • “Nothing weighs something.”
  • “Nothing is almost everything.”

And this is where Krauss’s biggest problem lay. It’s his definition, ultimately, of ‘nothing’. Craig exposed the issue in just one slide and even Krauss looked uncomfortable in his chair as the quotes above were read out.

Which brings me to the next point, which for some of you will seem quite trivial.

I was seated close to the stage and had a great view of Krauss the man. I watched him closely as Craig presented his views and was very disappointed to see some of his reactions that I would describe as just plain rude. Without a buzzer this time, Krauss was constantly either rolling his eyes in disapproval at some of Craig’s statements or even raising his hands at times to publicly announce his disapproval.

Why do this? One can only interpret this as arrogance and rudeness. I could not imagine Craig himself or Ravi Zacharias or John Lennox adopting these negative (look-at-me-folks) non-verbal gestures.

Stephen then links to a reaction to the debate from physicist Luke Barnes, whose preview of the debate I blogged about before.

The review is in a comment by Dr. Barnes:

It went alright, I think. A little too much interruption, and some red-herrings from the moderator, but reasonably civil and on-topic.

The most interesting bit came when Craig was trying to justify premise 2 of his argument:

“If the universe has an explanation, then that explanation is God.”

Krauss disputed this premise in the opening speech, saying that it just assumed God did it. Craig’s argument for premise 2 went something like this:

A. Definition: the universe is the totality of physical reality. (Call it the multiverse if you like, if there is one.)
B. Then, if the universe has an explanation, it cannot be in terms of physical things.
C. Since the universe includes all matter, energy, space and time, the explanation must then be a transcendent, immaterial, spaceless and timeless entity.
D. The only thing that Craig can think of that can be a cause whilst being immaterial is an unembodied mind.
E. Thus, if the universe has an explanation, then that explanation is a transcendent, immaterial, spaceless and timeless mind. That being deserves the title “God”.

Krauss responded by questioning the definition. He tried to get Craig to say that physical reality was just everything in spacetime, since then he could say that science can talk about spacetime foams and other postulated physical things more fundamental than spacetime. I think, given more time to clarify, Craig would have said that spacetime foam is a physical thing (since it can appear in physical theories) so its part of the universe.

Krauss also responded that D merely states the limit of the human mind, and says nothing about reality. Craig could have responded by asking for an alternative, or rephrased the argument as an inference to the best explanation. I think that “the only hypotheses I can think of” type assumptions are lurking behind almost all inferences. (Maybe I can show that from Bayes theorem. I’ll have a think about that.).

This was the most relevant bit of the debate, but then things got sidetracked (I think because of the moderator).

I replied to Dr. Barnes on his blog like this:

I think that Dr. Craig is leaving it to his opponent to present and defend alternatives to his views. It’s not his job in the time he has to present alternatives and refute. That’s the job of his opponent. Dr. Peter Millican did a good job of doing that in his debate with Dr. Craig, and Dr. Craig had to defend and refute the alternatives that Dr. Millican presented.

Thanks for your comments, Dr. Barnes. I linked to your preview and to this review of the debate as well.

Not sure if I want to spend the time summarizing these debates. It’s a joy to summarize a debate with Austin Dacey, or Walter Sinnott-Armstrong or Peter Millican, but Dr. Krauss is not in that class of debaters. But I think these debates are useful to show the fundamental unattractiveness of atheism as a worldview. I don’t want to be anti-reality like Dr. Krauss – always taking refuge in speculations and hiding from scientific evidence in order to keep up the delusion for as long as possible.

Mentoring

A clip from the 2013 Reasonable Faith speaking tour in Australia

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The question is “why should anyone care about Paul’s view on homosexuality, since Paul never met Jesus?”

Here is the answer:

Dr. Craig’s answer is two-fold. First, he said that Jesus was a Jew and had the same views on this question as Jews normally did. Second, he cited Jesus’ teaching about marriage being the union of one man and one woman in Mark 10:7-9 and Matthew 19:5. I heard this same verse presented when I was listening to the “It takes a Family” 2013 lectures, in the lecture by Dr. Robert Gagnon, who is an expert on what Jesus says about homosexuality.

Here are the relevant links, if you want to get yourself ready:

I had to respond to a similar question recently in the comments of this blog, too. The questioner “JB” asserted that Christians could also be pro-abortion, and I replied with this:

Well there you have it. It doesn’t matter that the early church took in abandoned infants and prohibited abortion, because JB knows what the Bible really meant – not the early church.

Look:
http://birdsoftheair.blogspot.com/2010/11/early-christianity-on-abortion.html

Quote:

Recently I came across a reading of the Didache. “The what?” you may ask. The Didache is a book written somewhere in the first or second century. For a long time it was up for consideration as Scripture. It was believed to be the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Eventually it was agreed that the book was an excellent book, but not inspired Scripture. So I was pleased to be able to download this admirable book containing good teachings from the early Church fathers.

The book seemed to be largely a lot of quotes from Scripture. You’ll learn the basic rules of Christianity — “First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself.” You’ll learn that “grave sins” are forbidden, like adultery, murder, fornication, and so on. (They specifically include pederasty in the list.) There are instructions regarding teachers, prophets, Christian assembly, and so on. Lots of the normal, good stuff. But, since this was written sometime prior to 200 AD, I was somewhat surprised at this instruction: “You shall not murder a child by abortion” (Didache, Ch 2).

More are linked here:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/earlychurchfathers/fatherscover.html

Notice how these early Christian sources conflict with JB’s assertion that there can be pro-abortion Christians. Not just one time, but many, many times. That’s because JB is wrong in his interpretation of the Bible.

Basically, what JB has been doing in his comments is interpreting the Bible against the grid of modern non-Christian ideologies and completely disregarding the interpretations of the text by the people who were closer to the original events. Bible-believing Christians get the meanings of the words from the people who were closest to them, whereas JB is trying to project modern immorality back into the ancient text for his own purposes.

Note: I do get annoyed with people who claim to be Christians but aren’t, so I wasn’t at my best there.

But just like Dr. Craig, I am appealing to the people nearest the events to see how the Bible was interpreted at the time. Of course I had all the time in the world for my reply, and Dr. Craig had to have his ready in a split-second. Still Dr. Craig could not have answered this challenger, because he was busy in Australia doing debates with Lawrence Krauss in several big Australian cities. He couldn’t be here to answer this person’s questions. I hope my answers were as good, but it was left to me and two other commenters WorldGoneCrazy and Doug to answer JB. There was no one else to do the job.

J. Warner Wallace recently wrote a post about what it takes to be a Christian apologist.

He had 3 points:

Accept Your Identification
Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15 that all of us have a duty to be ever-ready to make the case for our hope in Jesus. This isn’t an option reserved for a few well-trained professionals; all of us, regardless of position or vocation, are tasked with this honor. As I wrote in Cold Case Christianity, when we, as Christians, live without embracing this aspect of our identity, we are living an abbreviated Christian life. The sooner you accept this aspect of your Christian character and identify yourself as an apologist, the more likely you are going to take it seriously. Start calling yourself a Christian Case Maker (“apologist”) today.

Accept Your Obligation
Although every Christian is called to be a Case Maker, some are definitely better than others. Once you begin to identify yourself in this way, you’ll sense your own inadequacies as you engage others. As a result, you’ll likely begin to train yourself (formally or informally) to meet the challenge. You may find yourself in a certification or advanced education program, but you may not. Some of the best and most effective apologists are not formally trained in apologetics. The two best-selling apologetics authors in America, Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel, have no formal training in the area of apologetics or philosophy. It’s clear, however, that both of these men take their obligation as Christian Case Makers seriously and have studied their worldview and practiced their craft.

Accept Your Location
While many of us would love to leave our “day jobs” to work as vocational apologists, let me encourage you to stay wherever God has already placed you. I am a “one dollar apologist”; a Christian Case Maker who still derives 90% of my income from my career as a detective. I have always equated my life as a Christian with my life as a Christian Case Maker. For this reason, I could no more call myself a vocational Christian apologist than I could call myself a vocational Christian. God has given me this set of investigative skills so I can share them with others, and He’s placed me in this career, at this time and place, as part of the larger Christian family.

I don’t think anyone sees the battlefield as well as J. Warner Wallace does. And he is tolling the bell for you in that post.

Were you in?
Were you in?

I remember vividly a story in the past when walking down the corridor of my apartment building with my laundry hamper full of dried clothes. I was being stopped by a U.S. Marine who asked me about the U.S. Marine hoodie I was wearing. He asked me a question I will never forget. He said “were you in?”.  I said that no, I was not in, because I was trained as a software engineer at the undergraduate and graduate level and that it was my day job to write code. (In fact, I am going to be working all day Saturday and Sunday with JQuery, JSP, CXF, JAXB, JSON, JPA/Hibernate and other technologies to get my REST web services complete for Monday morning stand-up). But I told him then that as part of learning about America, which all Americans should do, that I had been reading the U.S. Marine Corps reading list and that I bought this hoodie to show my support for the Marines. I think he was hoping that I was a former marine. The motto of the USMC is “Semper fidelis” which means “always faithful”. And that’s exactly what God expects from us, according to 1 Corinthians 1:1-5.

Were you in?

Commentary

Correcting four myths about the history of the Crusades

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Here is an interesting article from First Principles Journal. (H/T The Poached Egg)

Intro:

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.

The four myths:

  • Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.
  • Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich.
  • Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives.
  • Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians.

Here’s the most obvious thing you should know. The Crusades were defensive actions:

In a.d. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian. Certainly there were many Christian communities in Arabia.

By a.d. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.

What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about a.d. 800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and began to island-hop across from North Africa toward Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland by 837. A confused struggle for control of southern and central Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.

This is always good to know when you are answering Muslims, because they do tend to bring it up.