Many of us couldn’t listen to the April 7 debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig at Notre Dame (topic: does morality come from God?) because the audio was atrocious. The whole two-hour debate has now been put on YouTube with good audio:
Sam has some remarks on the debate at his website, which support what he told me: if you spend all your time rebutting your opponent’s contentions, you never get to make your points.
I read Harris address some of his critics. Maybe Harris could have stated and emphasized that Craig’s assertion that the foundation of morality comes from God is something that’s not provable. The only manifestation of this would be the Bible (or equivalent holy books), and those were written by people. Harris thinks science can be a foundation of morality and Craig thinks that ancient people can be a foundation of morality. In that light, it becomes more clear who has the stronger position?
Sam Harris performed exceptionally well in this event. He has done what he has set out to do: to present his point of view and not be distracted by the “debate tactics”
I think most of us agree with Sam’s point of view and the fact that he is doing this great job of infusing new meaning in the concept of morality – the one that is based on science and intellectual honesty
Excellent performance on all accounts!
– Morality is determined by God!
– No, it’s determined by evolution!
…Right.
god and morality cannot be defined because the substance underlying the words “god” and “morality” is outside of science domain
we all put our own meaning into words and this debate showed it perfectly – each side just keeps saying its own words with its own meanings and neither party is interested in coming to a consensus – the debate as a process is more important that coming to consensus (especially when both party do NOT want to come to agreement)
Bullshit, Harris specifically defines moral behaviour as that which leads to greater human well being than the althernatives. It doesn’t suit the faithists because then you don’t get to stone your daughter to death for being raped. But he defined it. If you don’t like that definition explain why.
And as Craig pointed out , Harris makes an arbitrary redefinition of morality. Why should we accept Harris’ counterintuitive definition over every other one? Could you tell me?
Say, you don’t happen to post over at Project Reason under the nym “researcher,” do you?
I always laugh at the arrogance of that assertion. Your blind assertion to the limits of science is laughable and contrarian.
There are so many things that were outside the realm of science that are now in the realm of science that our ancestors from just a couple of hundred years ago would die of shock. We’ve harnessed the atom. We’ve learned to fly. We’ve been to space and the moon. We can bring the freshly-dead back to life. We can replace hearts, eyes and other organs. We can address and treat many mental illnesses.
We have made tremendous strides and , And we continue to push back the frontiers.
Because ‘today’ is not ‘forever.’ And what we can’t do today, we may very well find to be possible tomorrow, or in a hundred years, who knows. Because science works and science advances and the more we learn, the more we settle and, paradoxically, the more questions we have.
I had much less of a problem Craig during this debate than most people I read on the internet. I’m not sure why.
For at least the first part of the debate I found myself agreeing with most of the things he said. If there were a God, then moral prescriptions would be objectively binding in the sense that the Almighty Creator would hold us all responsible for following them.
Sam Harris’ morality isn’t objectively binding, nor is it supposed to be (which is why I don’t agree with him using the word “morality”). So really Craig and Harris were talking about metaphysically different things, which only Craig bothered to point out.
And if the topic of the debate was “Does good come from God”, then the only argument of Harris’ that directly addresses this is that if god commanded us to rape and kill 3 year olds we would still say that is immoral. Thus, good cannot come from God, but from our own psychology. QED.
“…I found myself agreeing with most of the things he said. If there were a God, then moral prescriptions would be objectively binding in the sense that the Almighty Creator would hold us all responsible for following them.”
Having the power to punish people who don’t follow your rules doesn’t make the rules “objectively binding” in a moral sense. Since it’s logically possible for any values at all to be held by an omnipotent being it makes morality arbitrary.
“Sam Harris’ morality isn’t objectively binding, nor is it supposed to be (which is why I don’t agree with him using the word “morality”).”
It’s moral truth in the sense that it’s a fact that certain values lead to greater well-being (an intrinsic good) than others.
Moral propositions don’t have to be “binding” in the sense of enforcable by an authority figure for them to be, in fact, true moral claims.
well… I guess what I’m trying to say is that Craig was talking about something close to what people usually mean when they talk about morality. The naive belief is that certain things are just wrong, and they try to justify that by saying that God said so or that the universe is built that way. None of these explanations make sense, but Craig was at least using the words “good” and “moral” in the way people normally do, which seems to be addressing the debate topic to me.
[Harris’ morality] is moral truth in the sense that it’s a fact that certain values lead to greater well-being (an intrinsic good) than others.
That’s just a regular truth. Also known as a “fact.”
(Assuming we can objectively measure well-being, which I seriously doubt we can given our current level of knowledge, and Harris speaks derogatorily of people who ask him how we can measure it.)
In this debate Harris does say he is talking about mental health and the health of societies. Do you think we can’t measure those at all? Or only to a negligible extent?
I don’t see how we can measure them right now. How do you compare one person’s wellbeing to another? I don’t see how we can and be secure that our comparison is correct.
The kicker is, I don’t even think this matters. What if we measured wellbeing and found that the wellbeing increase I get from owning you as a slave outweighs your resulting wellbeing decrease? There’s no way anyone would say that’s moral. Harris seems confident that the math would never come out this way, but he offers no argument for why it couldn’t. He just asserts that his unspecified measurement would work a certain way, but it might not. Science needs experiments.
Tim
This is crap. Harris clearly articulated a perspective onto which humanity can and do build on improving the foundation of morality through linking it with well-being. It provides a substantive model by which the community can contribute to greater moral outcomes.
The old theist model, ‘morality comes from god’, was promulgated at a time when our knowledge and understanding of the genetic and evolutionary basis for morality undergirded by our tendency for altruism was so very lacking. Unfortunately, the obfuscation and sheer execrable disposition of theists not to budge from such a tenuous and dubious christian ‘trooth-claim’ about the origins of morality continue to plague society to this very day. I cite the many utterly outrageous attempts by state legislatures to impinge on people’s human rights, such as the Dover Area school issue with ID, the Nebraskan legislation that results in truly great personal tragedy of parents and impotence of doctors to provide the best medical care possible.
“I don’t see how we can measure them right now. How do you compare one person’s wellbeing to another?”
Harris covered this in his discussion of health in regard to medicine as analogous to well-being in regard to morality. Besides which we measure factors pertinent to well-being all the time. We collect statistics on crime rates, infant mortality, cancer rates, life span, suicide rates, drug addiction, obesity, education levels, high school dropout rates and thousands of other things pertinent to what we mean when we talk about well-being.
And yet none of those statistics can give me a number for how much your wellbeing decreases if I own you as a slave, and how much my wellbeing increases. Without such a number, or measure, it is impossible to decide whether slavery is wrong.
“That’s just a regular truth.”
A regular truth about values. In other words, a moral truth. As to what people mean by the word “morality” the fact is that people mostly don’t have a clear definition of morality. It’s a fuzzy word and always has been. I see nothing problematic with Harris’ use of the word. It tracks quite well with how I understand the term.
Concentual incest with contraception increases wellbeing. Most people say that it’s immoral, even if you only do it once. But since you understand morality in terms of wellbeing, I assume you’re okay with incest?
I find it icky. But my ick response is not something I necessarily consider a reliable guide to whether a moral claim is true.
Consider, for example, the hypothetical case in which someone who was put up for adoption ended up unknowingly marrying a biological sibling. If both were infertile and there was no issue of having children with birth defects I would not necessarily say they should divorce. I would need to see evidence that actual tangible harm results. Other than the social consequences should others find out about it—which doesn’t directly result from the incest but from the attitudes of others to it.
Personally, I’d almost certainly divorce. But I don’t see a compelling reason I would have moral objections if I knew of such a case in which they didn’t.
A good thought experiment to examine for it’s relevance to this topic though. Anyone else have any thoughts? Why should or shouldn’t we object to incest? And what does this say about Harris’s moral theory?
I should also point out that this proposition:
“Concentual incest with contraception increases wellbeing.”
is far from established and is quite open to reasonable doubt. It seems to me that given the reality that we have such a strong taboo response to incest that cases of even consentual incest would almost always lead to extreme guilt. And that isn’t exactly conducive to well-being.
As has been pointed out, this isn’t a simple black & white question or answer. You know what system is good at delving into the nuances and then gathering data to confirm or reject the hypothesis?
Religion!
No wait, it’s the other one, science. Whatever the answer to this question might be, I think we’d agree that there are answers and that if we can untangle the issues enough to get an answer, it will be through science and not through some other system.
I found the so called debate totally frustrating as, once again, the two combatants were completely talking past each other and obviously both had come with a pre set script meaning that any chance of a meaningful debate was going to be an impossibility.
Why does this kind of ‘political rally’ format of debate seem to be the only way Americans can ‘debate’ (for want of a better word)? This format does nothing to encourage meaningful and progressive inter-action but simply provides a platform for the kind of shallow rhetoric you expect from political and religious leaders who are afraid of having their deluded ideologies torn apart at the seam.
At the end of the day nothing new had been learned about each person’s position and it seemed like the only winner was Notre Dame who may receive some kudos for attracting two of the biggest hitters in the atheist/theist world.
I was in a debating society in college, and I did a lot of debating in this sort of back and forth timed format. It has its pros and cons… everyone gets to have a say, without interruption and other grandstanding, and can bring in their own premade remarks, and make points that might escape them in a conversation, particularly if they get railroaded. I’m reminded of that lengthy conversation Dawkins had with a woman who refused to believe their was evidence, even though Dawkins tried, over and over again, to go to a museum and look at it. If it had been more formal, this would have been a much shorter exchange. I also think it can keep people a little more civil to take turns, but perhaps its just a matter of good moderation.
The downsides are as you stated, it tends to derive into dueling speeches rather than an actual argument, and its much harder to reply to a full speech than a few statements. In a way, it can be very much like blogging here… after you’re done, you miss what you could have said, what you’d like to have elaborated on, etc.
While personally I can’t stand to watch debates where each side talks past the other, I do recognize that it has some advantages.
1 – Craig is going to do this no matter what, so there’s nothing to gain by trying to engage with his arguments. He is not trying to present a dialog nor even to explore his opponent’s arguments and by trying to do this, you cede the lead to him.
2 – By spending 5 minutes to rebut a distortion Craig spent 5 seconds tossing out, you will never get a chance to present your own arguments
Also when you think about your audience it only makes sense to come in with your own argument and to present that regardless of what Craig says (like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, this may change if your opponent is capable of showing reciprocal respect. Craig is not.). Your supporters will get a chance to hear you present your lively and impassioned argument so they get a reward, and your detractors get a chance to hear your actual position not the strawmen that Craig erects. Perhaps you don’t get quite as much time to attack his distortions but your supporters know these flaws and your detractors’ gain is marginal.
I’ve received a fair amount of criticism for not rebutting his remarks point for point
Nonsense. Harris conquered by adopting the tactics of Oxford Union debating. I’d wager that any poll of the audience would support Harris’s victory by wide margins.
Harris also skillfully undermined Craig’s righteousness by addressing (but not dwelling upon) Craig’s misrepresentations with understated references to Harris’s own book and the youtube record.
Very nicely done.
You don’t think that Harris having to resort to the same old attacks on Christianity/Bible near the end of the debate sort of diminished his performance? I maybe reading too much into it – but it almost seemed like he reached a point where he decided “f-it, time to stop discussing science/morality and just beat up the Bible.”
No. Craig would have dearly loved to constrain the discussion to objective morality external to people, and independent of any God. Harris’s attacks were excellent strategy for three reasons:
1. They subverted Craig’s unstated position by pointing out the obviously psychopathic immoral God implicitly championed by Craig.
2. They played to the audience, but without going to the point of losing its support.
3. Harris avoided a meddlesome, time-consuming technical discussion about Utilitarianism, a topic that Craig attempted unsuccessfully to address with his many ‘Is vs Ought’ appeals-to-authority. Had Craig been more competent or effective here, Harris would have had to defend himself, and that would indeed have been interesting. But why waste time defending if your opponent hasn’t laid any blows? Better to attack.
You don’t think that Harris having to resort to the same old attacks on Christianity/Bible near the end of the debate sort of diminished his performance?
That’s a neat confidence trick religion plays on us. Making us think it’s passé to state that the obviously ridiculous is obviously ridiculous.
I absolutely agree. Craig himself started getting disconcerted, and Harris was great.
Hi stvs
“Harris conquered by adopting the tactics of Oxford Union debating. I’d wager that any poll of the audience would support Harris’s victory by wide margins.”
That he certainly did. Without question.
I actually enjoyed the debate. You can see my own take at thereasonbehindx.blogspot.com
I do wish there had been more interaction between the two. However, I do think Harris creamed Craig here.
One helpful comment I read said:
Harris: “There is no evidence that unicorns exist!”
Craig: “That’s not the topic of tonight’s debate! We’re debating whether unicorns have horns”
LOL
True. Part of WLC’s game is to force his opponent to individually rebut a gish gallop of claims.
WLC has said that God provides a pumb bob for objective morality–yet he is unable to prove that religion provides a consistent morality. Instead,, WLC brings up extremes we can all agree are immoral and then claims that proves religious objective morality.
Harris says morality is objective–scientifically objective–and brings up the moral extreme of a hypothetical worst possible and claims that proves morality can be scientifically objective.
Problem is, neither WLC can point to agreed upon, actual objective standards. WLC just claims they exist–and that they are Christian–but can’t say which Christian sect is right. And Harris just says “well-being” a lot and can’t provide an objective definition.
Both WLC and Harris failed to prove any standard of objective morality. Maybe a better debate would have been “is morality objective?” Both WLC and Harris seem very disturbed by the idea that there is no objective morality, but they don’t really have any sound evidence that morality is or even can be objective in any real sense.
if you spend all your time rebutting your opponent’s contentions, you never get to make your points
Exactly.
Too many scientists try to engage in debates and mistakenly imagine that they’re dealing with a person who is listening and honestly engaging with your arguments. That may be the norm in science but Craig doesn’t give a shit about any of that. He’s there to present his case while smearing his opponents as much as possible while still keeping his holier-than-thou smirk.
Harris has it right – with debates in general (and with people as totally lacking intellectual honesty like Craig) you have to present your own case first and then deal with a few of the most noxious arguments they vomit up.
How utterly true. I once debated a fundamentalist creationist and it would not have mattered if I brought out Darwin himself, he knew what he knew and that was it. Which wasn’t much, BTW, but it did not matter to him.
A lot of people have neither the education nor the skills at rational/critical thinking to ever properly deal and analyze God vs No God arguments. Besides, they derive a great deal of comfort for knowing that a Big Dad in the Sky is watching over them, no matter how badly he may have behaved as portrayed in the Bible. All this scholarly analysis is meaningless to most Americans.
I didn’t see anything new in Sam’s book, it’s just a variation on what we’ve been saying for a long time. Harris just tells it very well.
When someone claims that morality must come from god I ask them if they think that god would ask them to do something stupid.
“No, of course not!”
“Then morality must be reasonable.”
“Makes sense, if you do something ugly to another then that shit comes back to you”
“So if morality is reasonable then you could just figure it out for yourself or your mom could and then teach you”
“Yes, of course.”
“So, what do you need god for? In any case you’re already figuring it out for yourself when you decide to not do the stupid shit that god asks people to do in the bible. No cheeseburgers? WTF?”
Kevin, I like your point of view(hope you don’t mind if I use it.)
As you implied God as per the bible says kill those who work on the Sabbath. When did we stop doing this, hopefully a long time ago. Morality come from society based on the evolution of that society over time. Eventually we can hope for a globalization of the current western moral societal views (with more time and evolution). That is where I think we can get to with the Moral Landscape view that Sam presents. (The fact that we can use scientific methodology to help us to get there is icing on the cake.)
“if you spend all your time rebutting your opponent’s contentions, you never get to make your points. ”
While this is true, I also think it’s disingenuous. Harris just isn’t a very good debater; you can make your points in a forceful way and blunt the effectiveness of your opponent, too. Harris didn’t do either. Can’t we be in favor of someone, yet still admit that they suck?
In the end, Harris doesn’t have much of an argument; rather, he redefines what morality means. I like his definition better than I like Craig’s, but what needs to be justified is that my preference for a source of morality (whatever that is) is a valid way of choosing that source as the one to use in my daily life. Neither of them made a case for that.
“Harris doesn’t have much of an argument; rather, he redefines what morality means.”
Craig’s definition is “imperatives issued by a competant authority.” Competant authorities issue imperatives all the time that we don’t deem to be moral imperatives. I think Harris’s definition (maximizing wellbeing) is more in line with the colloquial use of the term ‘morality’ than Craig’s, and so I think Craig is the one redefining morality, not the other way around.
Harris’ definition isn’t really that useful; each of us will reject that definition the moment it conflicts with our intuitive, evolutionarily-derived sense of morality. This is the fate of all moral systems.
I think Harris’s point is that, operating in the background of every moral system, is a concern for maximizing wellbeing. In other words, this evolved sense of morality is in fact already a concern for wellbeing. We’re not redefining it, just making more explicit what was already operative.
“operating in the background of every moral system”
I don’t think that’s in the background of every moral system.
It’s not.
Incest increases well-being between two consenting individuals who use contraception, yet people still say it’s immoral. The reason is simply that we evolved to find it repulsive, for obvious genetics-related reasons.
Or look at different versions of the trolley problem, where humans judge the same results as moral or immoral depending on how “personal” the situation feels. Again, there is all the evidence of a quirky, illogical system that just happened to evolve this way. Increasing wellbeing is correlated with morality, but that is all. As Greg says, our moral intuitions trump Harris’ (still unexplained!) wellbeing-based arithmetic.
incest may increase well being for the two involved but it eventually leads to decreased well being for all involved.
Obviously simple moral questions don’t need to be answered by science or religion almost everyone works out the basic golden rule. Neither religion or science are needed for these.
Life gets more complicated however originally incest was fine with religions until evidence and observation showed why it was a problem. Then suddenly god changed his mind.
incest may increase well being for the two involved but it eventually leads to decreased well being for all involved.
In what way? With contraception, it’s no different from any other kind of sex between consenting adults.
Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are traveling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At very least
it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that, was it OK for them to make love?
Most people answer that it was wrong (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.124.9206&rep=rep1&type=pdf). Then they come up with conflicting reasons to explain why, none of which are valid because there was no decrease in well-being here. It simply feels wrong.
And what is it with people who don’t know where to end a sentence? Is this actually difficult, or do you think it’s just as easy to read either way??
Incest doesn’t break the golden rule.
More to the point, just before that you are only making Esre’s and Martin’s point for them, “well-being” is a bad measure (in as much as it exist as a measure at all).
Oops. As Martin said, consensual incest doesn’t break TGR,
But Harris doesn’t claim that our moral intuitions perfectly coincide with what is best for well-being. Those points you made, he accepts. I read him as trying to argue (probably unsuccessfully) that a concern for well-being is the only defensible basis for morality and that most people already have “well-being” as the center of their moral concerns.
I should say that I’m not trying to defend Harris’ thesis (not that I could do a good job at that). I have serious misgivings. I was initially really in agreement with him but I’ve had that beaten out of me on various comment threads/blogs. One of the values of them.
I honestly don’t think that Harris is basing his morality on wellbeing – he just *thinks* he is. He’s really appealing to our moral intuitions at every step. See my comment here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/our-visit-with-dr-sam/#comment-91611
Could you provide an example?
Objectivism, for one. I’m sure that a philosophy student could spit out a dozen.
Well-being isn’t much different, if any, from utilitarianism, which often leads to results that we consider immoral.
All of this discussion begs the question of how we choose a moral system. Should we choose one which appeals to our intuitions? How can we do that if our intuitions are unreliable? And if they are reliable, why do we need a system at all?
Considering morality has long been monopolized by religion, changing the definition isn’t such a bad thing. However I don’t think he’s redfining it, rather he’s trying to explain where it comes from and how we can use a scientific method (maybe not until neuroscience develops) to explain the origins and make predictions on what could cause more ‘Well being.’
The only thing I really have to assume from Harris is his definition of well being.
While true, there is also value in giving at least token attention to your opponent’s points.
Sam could very easily have spent the first two of his minutes explaining the Euthyphro Dilemma and observing that Craig’s Christian god commanded its followers to rape, murder, and pillage left and right while itself murdering humans wholesale with reckless abandon. Thus having trivially demolished the core foundation of Craig’s position, he can easily dismiss the rest of Craig’s arguments — all of which depend on his central thesis — as unworthy of serious consideration. At that point, it’s clear sailing.
Cheers,
b&
My thoughts exactly. I was at this debate and I was hoping/expecting him to bring up Euthyphro and ‘the might makes right’ principle early-on. I can understand him wanting to make his own points and to set the conflict in the context of world we live in though.
William Craig asserted that God is the source of morality, but did not give any evidence in support of this position.
Making claims is easy, I could claim that the source of all morality is Nigel, the hypercosmic Antilope, or Joe, the transdimensional Salamander, but what’s the point???
I am only halfway through the debate though, so there is still a possibility that Mr. Craig will change my mind 😉
Noting that both he and Harris agree that “morality is objective”, Craig asserted that *IF* God exists, then the objective basis for morality is plain. Since Harris asserts otherwise, then he is obliged to produce some other satisfactory explanation. Craig challenged the assignment of “maximum human flourishing” on the grounds that the term is not well-defined: it varies with who you ask.
Craig’s argument was of the form “only plausible alternative, however unlikely”, so he was wide open: if Harris presented another alternative, Craig’s argument collapses totally. But he didn’t.
Others have made this criticism of Harris, usually arguing that morality is not objective; I don’t see that Harris has responded effectively to anyone. Just my opinion, Harris obviously disagrees.
Cutting age topics in religious philosophy – well there’s an oxymoron
JWW reminded me something else that Craig said. He said morality comes from imperatives issued by a competant authority.” He used the analogy that people will be pulled over by a cop, but not regular person.
But don’t people decide to pull over out of fear of punishment (or greater punishment that comes with not pulling over)? Isn’t this similar to people’s worship of God coming from a fear of punishment (and not from a desire to do good deeds)?
“Sam has some remarks on the debate at his website, which support what he told me: if you spend all your time rebutting your opponent’s contentions, you never get to make your points.”
I think Harris approached the debate with a sound strategy—he had no need to directly refute Craig’s metaethics (the problems with divine command theory are well-known anyway). Since Craig claims that only a theistic basis for moral truth is possible Harris had only to focus on arguing for a naturalistic morality as strongly as possible. To the degree that he succeeded (and I think he did well) Craig’s claim is refuted.
The only problem I had was that I wished Harris would introduce the idea of intrinsic goods as to account for why it’s reasonable to take well-being/flourishing as the basis for morality.
In the his opening statement, Craig mentioned the 2 contentions he would defend:
Contention 2 being the familiar premise from his “Moral Argument”
During the Q&A (second question) however, Craig admitted he did not (and can not?) successfully defend the second contention:
Perhaps I’m reading too much into the bold text, but it seems that Craig is relying upon personal incredulity to get the vital second contention across the line, rather than sound argument
“First, if god exists then we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties,
Sounds dubious. Firstly, Zeus is a god but I don’t think Craig would consider him a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties. Although one would have to winder why, since Zeus is a much nicer god than Craig’s monster god.
Secondly, Craig would have to beg the question and circularly define his god as the “knower” of objective moral values and duties, but yet his god is a total jerk, and really freaking stupid too. So it really is not logically sound at all.
Secondly, Craig would have to beg the question and circularly define his god as the “knower” of objective moral values and duties,
Which he never does of course. He just says “god” and we’re expected to guess what he’s talking about. As if his (undefined) god is the only god anyone could ever guess. That’s another annoying thing about Craig. Total intellectual poopy-head.
I have a different assessment of the debate
Note the topic of the debate.
“does morality come from God?”.It was a question about whether the foundations of morality come from any God. The title of the debate was not “Is the bible/koran a good source of moral values?” or “Is the Christian religion true?” or “Is the biblical doctrine of hell bad?”
William Lane Craig kept on topic at least. He argued in his statement
(1)If God exists , he could provide a source pf objective moral values
(2)if God did not exist , there would be no objective moral values.
In support of (2) Craig critiqued Harris’ book “The Moral Landscape” where Harris tried to argue that objective morality could be grounded in a landscape apart from God.
However look at how many issues Sam Harris brought up.
(1) The Bible contains atrocities ordered by God
(2) The doctrine of hell is bad
(3) the problem of the unevangelised , What happens to those who don’t hear about Jesus?
(4) the problem of evil , why does God allow suffering?
(5)the problem of different religions , how do I choose the right religion?
(6) What happens if Islam is right?
(7) Islam is bad and I don’t like the Taliban
(8) The Catholic church is bad because they covered up child abuse
(9) Ad hominem attack: Christian who believe in divine command theory are “psychopatic”
(10) People in religions believe things without evidence- Harris says he thinks transubstantiation is ridiculous
(11) Christians believe in celebrating human sacrifice
Now note that each of these topics Sam Harris brought up could be expanded into a whole other debate and there are literally books on each of these topics. Note that almost none of them are relevant to the topic of the debate. The bible could be completely wrong and Allah or Vishnu is the source of morality. Craig would still have won the debate because morality could come from some other God beside the Christian God. Does anyone , think Craig could have reasonably address all of these claims in his rebuttal?
I don’t think he could. Harris knew that as well.
Harris is employing a technique debaters call the Gish Gallop. He trots out a large number of claims and then claims victory when Craig does not address them because they are off topic.
Even worse , Harris did a terrible job defending his objective moral theory from Craig’s criticisms. When pressed on this , he said that his moral theory should be taken to be axiomatic and needs no evidence or justification. Now imagine a Christian came up to you and says we should take the existence of god to be axiomatic. You would say he was being ridiculous. Why should I take the Harris moral theory and not any other theory to axiomatic?
However Sam Harris succeeded in concealing the fact that he didn’t give a substantive defense of his theory by bringing up a ton of unrelated issues. When Craig dismissed his objections and tried to stay on topic , it made him look bad. Harris is aware of this tactic and this is why he was so successful in the debate.
I think Harris may have won on style , but there was very little substance to his arguments in the debate.
Those topics are rather relevant to the issue of whether the foundations of morality actually lie in the sort of God almost all westerners believe in. Harris was not obligated to deal exclusively with an abstract question about hypothetical gods practically no one believes in.
“(9) Ad hominem attack: Christian who believe in divine command theory are “psychopatic””
Harris said quite clearly that he was not calling Christians psychotic. He said that religious people believe things that if only one person believed it would be called psychotic—in other words that our culture indoctrinates people into plainly absurd (and often vicious) beliefs.
“When pressed on this , he said that his moral theory should be taken to be axiomatic and needs no evidence or justification. ”
In other words that well-being is an instrinsic good. This seems as reasonable as axiom as any principle of logic. Do you deny that anything should be taken as axiomatic in moral theory? If so I’m not sure whether moral theory (or any other kind) would be possible.
““When pressed on this , he said that his moral theory should be taken to be axiomatic and needs no evidence or justification. ””
He said that the idea of well-being as the thing that morality is for is axiomatic (in the sense of being blantantly obvious to any reasonable person considering values objectively). Not that his whole theory was axiomatic. His theory was an elaboration on why this is a reasonable axiom, what follows for values from holding this axiom, and why other axioms (like “good is what God commands”) are not nearly as reasonable a foundation for our values.
“Harris said quite clearly that he was not calling Christians psychotic. He said that religious people believe things that if only one person believed it would be called psychotic—in other words that our culture indoctrinates people into plainly absurd (and often vicious) beliefs.”
You just stated the same thing but in different words. Christians aren’t psychotic , but they are indoctrinate to believe things that are psychotic.
“In other words that well-being is an instrinsic good.”
Harris’ claim is stronger than that. He claims the good is identical to maximizing well being. Why I should I take this to be axiomatic?
In fact we can think of clear counter-examples too. Imagine if I could kill a person and harvest their organs to save the lives of 5 people who need donations. This would maximize well-being however I would be hard pressed to agree it is moral.
“Do you deny that anything should be taken as axiomatic in moral theory?”
I don’t deny this. However Sam Harris spends a lot of time ridiculing people who believe in things without evidence. Now it seems that Sam Harris is perfectly fine with people accepting certain things (i.e. the axioms of Harris’ moral theory) without evidence. I think we have exposed a fundamental inconsistency in his epistemology.
“You just stated the same thing but in different words. Christians aren’t psychotic , but they are indoctrinate to believe things that are psychotic.”
That isn’t the same thing at all. It’s an acknowledgement that religious indoctrination can, and usually does, produce beliefs that are just as absurd as the beliefs produced by mental illness. It does NOT follow from this that religious believers therefore suffer from mental illness.
“Harris’ claim is stronger than that. He claims the good is identical to maximizing well being. Why I should I take this to be axiomatic?”
I think Harris would say that all other intrinsic good are sub-sets of well-being. That doesn’t seem at all unreasonable.
What axiom(s) would you propose in the place of the proposition “to do good is to maximize well-being”?
“In fact we can think of clear counter-examples too. Imagine if I could kill a person and harvest their organs to save the lives of 5 people who need donations. This would maximize well-being however I would be hard pressed to agree it is moral.”
Harris specifically addresses this question in the Q&A at the 1 hour 50 min mark in the audio I listened to. What fault do you find with his response?
“I don’t deny this. However Sam Harris spends a lot of time ridiculing people who believe in things without evidence.”
Things that are not properly regarded as axiomatic. It’s reasonable to suppose that being in pain is not worth desiring for it’s own sake—this is axiomatic in the sense of being obvious directly from our experience of pain. It requires no additional evidence. The proposition that I am the secret heir to the throne of America is not reasonable to take as axiomatic. Discussion of when and why something is legitimately regarded as axiomatic is relevant to moral theory but it’s also technical and requires a lot of time. That’s not something that would have been useful to go into in a very time-limited formal debate.
“Now it seems that Sam Harris is perfectly fine with people accepting certain things (i.e. the axioms of Harris’ moral theory) without evidence. I think we have exposed a fundamental inconsistency in his epistemology.”
See above.
The Gish Gallop is not when someone lists ten factual points which their opponent doesn’t chose to rebut, it’s when someone lists many (10+) claims which are lies or conclusively disproved long ago and which, coincidentally, take much longer to explain than it took to make.
Most of the points you raise seem like perfectly valid objections or counter-arguments and none of them are lies or disproved. Further, Craig has shown in decades of debates that he never, ever engages with the arguments of his opponents so when you say that Craig “tried to stay on topic” and that this “made him look bad”, this has absolutely nothing to do with Harris and in fact is simply how Craig debates all of the time. His staying on topic is actually his ignoring any counter-arguments, and his looking bad is, well, his unwillingness to engage in an honest discussion revealing him as the slimy huckster he is.
Tyro
A great way to tell if someone’s argument is off topic is to hold that the premises of that argument are true and see if affects the conclusion of the debate or the other person’s argument.
Look at Craig’s argument.
“(1)If God exists , he could provide a source ‘f objective moral values
(2)if God did not exist , there would be no objective moral values.”
You could be an atheist and agree with those 2 statements. In fact atheists like Nietzsche and JL Mackie believe that God could in principle provide a basis for moral values , but they do not believe that objective morals exist, so they agree with both premises. Richard Dawkins believes morality is completely subjective and is just a side-effect of evolution evolved so he would probably agree.
Now examine most of Harris objection. If they were true would they affect Craig’s argument? Of course not.
The Christian God could be a dick who sends atheists and Hindus to hell. Sam Harris could be utterly confused about which religion is right.The Catholic church could be completely corrupt.
However even if they were true, do not affect the conclusion of Craig’s argument.
Give me an honest answer. Given the speed at which Harris was throwing out assertions like this , and the number of them he threw out, do you think Craig could have reasonably addressed everything Harris said?
While Sam Harris would score points with his cheerleaders I applaud Craig for not getting distracted by red herrings.
I’d agree if we accept a very bastardized version of the term “objective values”. So bastardized in fact that if those statements were true then we could use anyone or anything as a basis. We might as well base our morals on Superman, Nixon, or even JC himself (Jerry Coyne, obviously).
If we instead say that objective morals are those which we can each independently agree upon using objective observations then no, the existence of god has nothing to offer.
Yes, they do affect it. They show that god’s morals are not objective, they show that humans trying to discern these so-called objective values disagree violently (showing they are not objective after all), and they show that many of the laws in the bible are seen as immoral by people of today (including religious people) which again shows that these morals vary which means they are not objective.
Harris’s objections are valid and serve to either undermine Craig’s simplistic argument or to build his own positive case.
Craig is taking a position which is contradicted by observation and reason, it shouldn’t surprise us that there would be a lot of objections which he cannot respond to. It takes a peculiar sort of mind to imagine that this is Harris’s fault and that Craig should receive some sort of compensation.
Wow. You are astonishingly poor at reading between the lines. If you could do that at all you would see that Harris of course addressed the topic of the debate and in fact trounced Craig. Craig tried to address the question from kind of a formal philosophical angle while Harris actually focused on actual things people believe about God. It can’t be news to you that the two dominant religions on earth by far are Christianity and Islam. Once you realize why the debate is even being had, Harris’ approach appears quite appropriate.
Also, “does morality come from god?” and “do the foundations of any morality come from any god?” are not identical questions. The first if the official topic of the debate and the second is Craig’s language. Your griping reduces to complaining that Harris didn’t take the bait of Craig and allow him to completely frame the debate.
A good point and one Harris addresses on his blog in his comments on the debate:
“Generally speaking, my critics seem to have been duped by Craig’s opening statement, in which he presumed to narrow the topic of our debate….Instead, I simply argued for a scientific conception of moral truth and against one based on the biblical God. This was, after all, the argument that the organizer’s at Notre Dame had invited me to make.”
Craig dishonestly representing someone else’s position? Shocking.
One thing I found very interesting in the debate is the way, toward the end, Craig claims that no God who didn’t have the characteristics of being benevolent, just and the like would qualify as God. This just sneaks the idea of benevolence, love and the like as intrinsic goods in through the back door. If these things ARE intrinsic goods (as those comments of his strongly imply that he is, in fact, assuming) then we have a foundation that works whether a God exists to perfectly embody them or not.
“And yet none of those statistics can give me a number for how much your wellbeing decreases if I own you as a slave, and how much my wellbeing increases. Without such a number, or measure, it is impossible to decide whether slavery is wrong.”
That’s simply absurd. I don’t have a precise measurement in units of pain as to how painful it would be for a person with a normal nervous system to get hit in the head by a 9 pound rock dropped from a height of 200 ft either. But I still know it would be something to be avoided.
Again, Harris already covered this topic when he talked about the analogous situation of health and the medical sciences. Do you have any criticisms of what he said—you seem to have completed ignored it and responded as if he didn’t even cover the topic.
Perhaps even more relevant are his comments at about the 1 hr 50 min mark when he talks about the effects for overall societal well-being of be a part of a culture that does such things.
Regardless, it’s pretty obvious that being a slave reduces a person’s well-being so the aggregate well-being of 2 free individuals is pretty obviously greater than that of a situation when one is free and one is enslaved.
This does bring up one of the ways in which I somewhat disagree with Harris. Which is that I think there are other intrinsic goods than well-being. I think the axiom that “the good is that which maximizes well-being” is one that will, if followed, nearly always track closely to moral truth. But one might be able to imagine cases where it would be incomplete. I don’t really think the slave example above is a good one but there might be others that are.
That said, I haven’t yet read THE MORAL LANDSCAPE and he may get into nuances to his position that are left out of a formal debate so I’m reserving judgement til I get a chance to read the book.
Yes, Craig wants us to obey an “objective” morality that declares owning slaves to be moral (OT, commanded by his god; NT, permitted by his god) and the list of nonsense sins Dr. C. has been parading, instead of a morality (which more or less everyone agrees on) that slavery is immoral.
Sam’s comment on the 10 Commandments is perfect: It’s trivially easy to imagine a morality that exceeds the religious ones. The “command model” morality of Craig is a cop-out. The way he knows the OT admonition for slavery and the NT excusing it is the evolved morality that he shares with us: NOT his precious command morality.
What a joke: He opens with two definitional moves:
1. I am defining god as inherently moral.
2. I am defining this debate as about a god assumed to exist.
What a fraud.
Hi folks, first time poster here. (Love this blog Jerry).
I’ve been in the religion/secularism debate trenches for a long time and W.L.Craig’s sleight of hand and ability to bamboozle an audience never fails to amaze me. He even managed to convince many people that Harris’ comments on Christianity were “irrelevant” to their debate!
The Judeo-Christian God that Craig routinely defends is a very problematical character for Craig’s arguments for objective morality. So it’s no wonder that Craig strains to guide the debate, keeping “Christian particularism” off the table. But Craig can’t complain that it becomes a topic if CRAIG HIMSELF invoked Judeo-Christian particularism during his defense of Divine Command Theory.
Here are Craig’s own words from his opening speech in the debate:
—————–
“God’s moral nature is expressed to us in the form of Divine Commandments, which constitute our moral duties or obligations.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition the whole moral duty of man can be summed up in the two great commandments: First, you shall love the lord your God with all your strength and with all your soul and with all your heart, and with all your mind.
And second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On THIS foundation we can affirm the objective rightness of love, generosity, self sacrifice and equality…etc.”
—————-
So it’s hardly convincing to declare Harris’ discussion of the Biblical God’s morality “irrelevant” or off-topic. Even if Craig wants to say he invoked Judeo-Christian Divine Command Theory as a conditional, an example, it would be just as legitimate that Harris would examine, conditionally, the liabilities of Craig’s example of Divine Command Theory in action.
Craig’s moral argument is analogous to claiming there are Objective Mathematical Truths – e.g. 2+2 = 4 – that would require grounding in some Transcendental Mathematician God (TMG). It’s obvious then that, in examining candidates for the TMG, we would dismiss any purported candidate who GETS THE MATH WRONG.
Harris effectively pointed out that Craig’s God gets the “moral math” wrong, making any invocation of that God as the grounds for morality absurd.
Further, if morality is objective in the way Harris argued, then a God would have to follow the same rules of morality to be “good.” As Harris remarked, his moral theory can “get behind” a God who would issue commands, to discern if those commands are evil or not. Whereas Craig’s Divine Command Theory could not offer any epistemological strategy in discerning between competing “God Commands” claims, and that Craig’s Divine Command Theory reduces to naive obedience.
Harris also discussed how Christianity and other religions inevitably “smuggle in” a concern for well-being, and if any particular religion were true it would of necessity be “part of the moral landscape.” Which is to say Harris’ argues that his axioms are deeper and more fundamental than his religious opponent’s axioms.
Whether someone ultimately agrees with Harris’ moral thesis or not, Craig and Harris’ critics can’t avoid the fact Christianity was given relevance in the debate, and that Christianity illuminates via example how both Craig’s and Harris’ moral arguments play out.
Vaal.
Just one more thing…
I agree with others that Sam could have made it vividly clear that
the Euthyphro Dilemma hammers Craig from every angle. (Naturally, Craig has is purported “answer” to the ED, grounding good in God’s nature. But it doesn’t work).
Does God have (good) reasons for why we ought to do X? Or is doing X “good” only because God commands X? No matter how theists squirm, God comes out superfluous in the end.
For instance, in trying to answer why we ought to follow God’s commands, Craig appealed to a principle we purportedly accept from human experience: that imperatives arise from the commands of “competent authorities.” An example being the commands of a policeman.
However, last time I checked, it was an essential component of being “competent” to have good reasons for your commands. If we asked a cop or Judge why he commanded us to stop speeding and either replied with a shrug “Beats me. No reason, really, I’m just commanding it”…then no one would describe such individuals as “competent.” I can’t think of one example in which anyone would be deemed a “competent” authority who could not give reasons for what they are telling you to do.
So if Craig is to appeal to our experience of accepting commands from competent authorities as a principle, then he can not go breaking from this principle as applied to God, otherwise Craig is Special Pleading. It follows that God, to be a competent authority, would have to appeal to Good Reasons for why we ought to do any X.
But then, it’s the reasons that make doing X “good,” not that God commands it. God isn’t required to exist for “X” to be good…we only need the reasons-for-doing-X for X to be “good.” God is superfluous. (And this bridges to Harris’ thesis about what reasons would exist for morality).
Euthyphro-type issues play whack-a-mole with virtually every move Craig makes in his moral arguments.
Vaal.
Sam did an excellent jopb of not falling for Craig’s high school debating tricks.
Craig goes on and on about how Harris refuses to let him set the topic and doesn’t answer his non-points. While never answering Harris’s telling points: Craig tries to win the debate by defining God and morality to fit his argument and the evidence is overwhleming that there is no god, that Craig has no special understanding of him if he did exist, and that the evidence shows that if there were a god he is not moral. And: why should we give a damn about a supposed morality that does not conform to human well-being: The actual well-being of individuals. Not to mention the problem of evil, the fact that no objective reference can be based on suppositions completely untethered to actual evidence, that all religions disagree about morality and he is specially pleading (that was blindingly obvious) and Craig refused to answer the tough questions from the audience.
What a fraudulent windbag.
“Craig goes on and on about how Harris refuses to let him set the topic and doesn’t answer his non-points.”
Craig’s “non-points” being a devastating criticism of Harris’ moral theory that Harris refused to answer.
“Craig tries to win the debate by defining God and morality to fit his argument and the evidence is overwhleming that there is no god, that Craig has no special understanding of him ”
Craig didn’t even defend the idea there was a God. He said it could be true that no morals exist and God does not exist. Craig defended 2 conditional statements. He didn’t even defend any specific religion and explicitly said as much
“(1)If God exists , he could provide a source of objective moral values
(2)if God did not exist , there would be no objective moral values.”
“And: why should we give a damn about a supposed morality that does not conform to human well-being”
Your care for human wellbeing is arbitrary. As Craig pointed out, why can’t morality be based on the well being of corn. On atheism , we’re just another species , no more or no less valuable than any other species. There is no reason under atheism to care about human wellbeing.
“Not to mention the problem of evil,”
Offtopic
” the fact that no objective reference can be based on suppositions completely untethered to actual evidence”
Did you watch the same debate. Sam Harris admitted he could provide no evidence for his claims that human wellbeing is moral and he said we should just take it as an axiom. Harris has no evidence and admitted as such.
“that all religions disagree about morality and he is specially pleading (that was blindingly obvious)”
Your argument
1)Religions disagree about morality
2)For Craig to claim any religion is right is special pleading
Parody argument
1)Secularists/atheists disagree on morality (ask any poll)
2)For Sam Harris to claim his moral theory is right is special pleading
“and Craig refused to answer the tough questions from the audience.”
he answered all the questions very well, except for that one by the lying atheist who said God told him gay sex was OK.
Basically, Sam cut through all the b.s. and did this: 1) He laid out his case, 2) he showed that WLC’s God can not be a contender for morality, and therefore 3) left his own case standing as being the more probable of the two.
That’s all he had to do, and he did it well – even with all of Craig’s tricks (like hiding behind a deistic god).