UPDATE: The audio for the debate has been posted here at Apologetics 315.

Reactions from the first debate of the Reasonable Faith UK speaking tour, featuring Dr. William Lane Craig.

These are just cut and pasted by me from Facebook with names removed.

J:

I cant believe Law didnt offer any objections to Theism other than the problem of evil.. The heckling was a bit disappointing, entertaining debate though. Law made some bad admissions in the after discussion which was quite funny :)

M:

so i just got home from the debate between william lane craig and stephen law.

was a very interesting debate, and law turned out to be one of the few atheists who had clearly carefully considered his debating strategy. Not once did he even attempt to argue for atheism, all he was ever trying to do was argue against “Craig’s God” (which is what he said himself).

wlc presented just three arguments this time, the kalam, the moral and the resurrection.

law didn’t respond at all to the kalam and literally just left it with “i don’t know”.

law’s opening speech was all on the evidential problem of evil without responding to any of Craig’s arguments. Then in first rebuttals he completely ignored all the arguments again, only seeking to defend his evidential argument from evil. I have to say his strategy was interesting but I think it backfired, simply because atheism just came out to be utterly indefensible. The kalam was not challenged once, only the moral nature of the Creator of the cosmos. As WLC said numerous times, “it’s a strange form of atheism that holds to the existence of an uncaused, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, powerful, transcendent and personal being who just isn’t morally perfect”!

atheism was definitely left in a bad state in this debate!
wlc had some good responses to the evil God challenge

More M:

it was quite an interesting debate. wlc presented just 3 arguments: kalam, moral & resurrection. then law spent his whole first speech on the evidential problem of evil, with his evil God challenge mixed in. In the whole first rebuttals again law COMPLETELY ignored wlc’s 3 arguments, and didn’t respond to them until the FINAL rebuttal!

law didn’t even argue for atheism. he didn’t challenge the kalam once, and i mean not once! for me, he conceded that atheism was false (even though he doesn’t believe that himself) and instead just tried to show that whoever this Creator is, we can’t know whether he is good or evil. I thought he was really weak on the moral argument as well. I found that overall his tactics were to not specifically deny any of the premises of any of the arguments, instead he just kept repeating that craig hasn’t proved ____(insert premise) to his satisfaction.
But check it out for yourselves later in the week!

C:

I give respect to Stephen Law, he seems like a nice guy who is very intelligent and took this debate seriously.

The evidential problem of evil is tougher to fend off, but once again another Non-theist (as I think Law is an agnostic) tries his argument for personal preference.

Law basically stated ” I don’t find God to be good under my standards of what I think is good, therefore I don’t think he exists, but if he does exist he is an evil God”

And was it me or did Law mix up what is “prescriptive” morality and “descriptive” morality when he spoke about ethical naturalism? It seems as if he had it backwards.

Law gave me the impression he was either an agnostic or a closet Deist

Some selected Tweets as of Tuesday morning at 2 AM:

reNewedAtheist Tom Samuel:
i think it’s safe to say that Law didn’t do his homework. i even tweeted at him telling him to come prepared….

UnbelievableJB Justin Brierley:
Did Law defend atheism or agnosticism tonight? #RFTour one person left saying deism perfectly plausible on Law’s arguments tonight

And most importantly:

UnbelievableJB Justin Brierley:
Complete Craig vs Law debate goes online as an early podcast tomorrow. premier.org.uk/craig #RFTour

UnbelievableJB Justin Brierley:
@BenMartinBass video will go online after tour is over but I’m putting the audio out as an early poddie tomorrow @RFupdates

You should follow @UnbelievableJB on Twitter for more updates. It’s Justin Brierley’s feed, and he is posting updates continously.

The thing you need to realize about the evidential/probabilistic argument from evil is that it has to be weighed along with other countervailing evidence in favor of God’s existence. It is not a deductive argument. Craig presented three arguments in favor of the proposition, so Law has to respond to those in order to win the debate. Moreover, I am sure that he would not be able to answer the challenge of how he knows that any particular instance of evil is gratuitous. I hope Brian posts the debate audio soon.