I’ve been meaning to put these up for a while, but finally got around to it. I haven’t yet watched either debate yet (one is actually supposed a “discussion”), but now I will. Be aware: each debate is about two hours long. They’re worth watching, I hear, because although Craig is an accomplished debater and rhetorically skillful, the scientist on the other side supposedly got the best of him. Watch and judge for yourself.
First, Sean Carroll vs. William Lane Craig on “God and Cosmology”, Greer-Heard Forum of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, February 9, 2014:
I’m especially proud of Sean for this, as everyone said he mopped the floor with Craig and, after all, Carroll is the Official Website Physicist™. You can see his post-debate reflections, posted on his website, here.
Second, a “discussion” between Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig at Adelaide’s City Bible forum, which took place on August 20 of last year. The topic given on the website is “the big questions of Life, the Universe and Nothing.”
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I watched Sean’s dismembering of WLC at the time, and it was amazing. One of today’s brightest minds in physics demonstrating he’s every bit as effective an educator, by trying to give introductory QFT lessons to WLC and doing so in a manner accessible to anybody who graduated high school. And yet Craig stubbornly insisted on remaining ignorant….
I’m looking forward to watching Lawrence have a go at Craig; thanks for drawing attention to it.
b&
I very much enjoyed both videos. I was especially amused by Krauss’ concise summary beginning at about 22:30. He had debated Craig before and so was able to cut him off at the knees early on. Very exciting work.
Contra the title, I doubt that Craig himself was embarrassed for the reason that Krauss describes in his first statement. But it is obvious that the audience should have embarrassed for him.
For the Carroll/Craig debate, introductory remarks begin at about 10:40, and the debate (beginning with the rules) starts at about 19:30.
I thought Sean did a good job when I watched this a while back.
But going the “informal conversation” route really makes Craig look bad. I’ll watch Lawrence take him apart when I have time, but this is another “informal conversation” Craig had with Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan. It’s great. Kagan doesn’t have to deal with Gish Gallops because he’s able to counter wrongitudes as Craig issues them. And Craig’s rhetorical style of simply sounding confident and repeating talking points (even after rebuttals that addressed those points) doesn’t work in an organically flowing conversation.
Yes. I forgot the closing HTML tag.
(I should say: Craig does try simply to repeat his talking points, but when it’s immediately in the heels of Kagan explaining the problem with the point, the pathetic nature of the tactic is brought into sharp relief.
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Did you forget the “:-” ? < G >
Inevitable, really.
Listening to Craig is a waste of time. He never listens, he just waits to talk. These people are all the same. And most, if not all, of their Youtube channels have the comments disabled. They are not only liars, but cowards as well.
I don’t think they are liars. They are probably bullshitters in the sense as elucidated by Harry Frankfurt.
Believers are perhaps auto-theistic. They are brought up in a tradition they never question and have convince themselves that their own views are somehow divine, by asserting a vector from the divine to them, and not the other way around. By definition the believer cannot disagree with God, and must always obey whatever rules he finds important. They invariably turn out to be exactly the ones the individual coincidentially already believes, either true convictions or some mental condition where these beliefs are “split off” and seen as an external force working on them.
I don’t think that Craig and others are actually charlatans. They probably truly believe what they claim. They are just bullshitters in Frankfurt’s sense in their personality structure, and authoritarians. They have a disregard for the truth (the best approximation we have) and work with an Ersatz Truth that is true in their tradition. With such a value system they can appear dishonest and charlatan-like without being one.
They may have justifications that it’s okay to use certain rhetorical trickery to make the point, because that’s expected or normal in their mind-set and may not understand that it violates expectations people have who generally try to keep their views in congruence with what we found out about the world. What is important to them is their tradition above everything else.
Interesting, I listened to that Craig vs Krauss debate just earlier the week (I listen to such things when I go running). Just days before I listened to Craig vs Harris, and D’Souza vs Hitchens. They joined a longer lists of debates I listened to some time ago, including Bruggencate and other apologetics that probably cost me a few brain cells.
Argueing with the faithful is more like beating up a five year old and it takes quite some effort to look graceful while doing it. I didn’t like Lawrence Krauss performance this time around. I am all for stridency and mockery, but you have to be careful where and how especially when it can get reasonably personal. I didn’t like his hypothetical example with Craig being gay, not only because it may hit a bit too close to home (which is no issue for me of course, but potentially for Craig), but even when it wasn’t meant that way it appeared mean spirited.
Krauss speech was too hasty. He didn’t give weigth to the good arguments and then didn’t let them sink. I like Lawrence Krauss enthusiasm and passion, and his frankness, however these traits can at times get the better of him.
These debates generally have shown that Sophisticated Theologians™ have nothing whatsoever. You still can’t buy anything with 100 imagined thalers in your pocket, but imaginary thalers and real thalers, as concepts in your mind can be identical. I fail to see what’s new in Craig’s arguments (e.g. the Kalam Argument) or Plantinga etcetera that wasn’t there in principle in Anselm’s ontological argument already, and which was famously refuted by Immanuel Kant.
How do you get the MP3 file out of the video, or is this a YouTube-ism that I haven’t noticed so far?
If you use Firefox, there’s an add-on called DownloadHelper; or there’s this site.
The name rings bells. I’d not added it to this laptop’s installation.
as they say at NASA, “that’s in work”.
There are converter websites out there, that can do this. I use clipconverter.cc and am happy with the results, as it also allows you to tell start and end (cutting out introductions and the like). Sometimes I have to load it into a suitable programm to normalize the volume level, but that’s it.
There were actually three different events with Krauss & Craig, hosted by the same guys, and in all Krauss was magnificent.
Should be on youtube.
Based not on quality of the arguments, but on personality and disposition, Craig is one of my least favorite Christian apologists re his defense of divinely commanded mass murder and slaughter of children, and then claiming that naturalists can have no basis to disagree given they have no foundation for ethics. He’s basically slimy, and a homophobe as well.
But since he appeals a lot to the findings of astrophysics and has even published in an astrophysics journal, I guess Carroll and Krauss need to go at him.
For the record, again based not on quality of arguments but on personality and disposition, my favorite apologist would be CS Lewis.
Eh. If you’ve seen one WLC debate, you’ve seen them all. Seriously – does this guy not update his material between debates? =\
Why would he need to? God told him ; he believed God ; that settled it.
And that’s why he can be regarded as dishonest, and why I would regard debates with him as a waste of time.
Sean Carroll is Badass! Even WLC seems impressed at the end when they both shake hands.
I guess I don’t have anything of substance to say. I just wanted to emphasize how great it is to listen to Sean Carroll, and not just in contrast to WLC.
Jerry,
You will agree with probably only one of WLC points – his rebuttal of Sean Carroll’s defence of freewill. It is actually a point ou have made yourself – it exists noly if it is redefined!
Sean Carroll needs to do a bit more thinking on that question.
Carroll and Krauss. Two outstanding educators for all of humanity. They are a pleasure to listen to and an inspiration to work hard at one’s own life. They make me miss Hitchens.
I am both fascinated and dumbstruck at WLC. As others have said, it is usually a waste of time to debate him. Unfortunately, too many Christians confuse form and style, which Craig has in abundance, with argument, which Craig argues via circular reasoning and/or equivocations. I’m always amazed at how unmoved he is by anything anyone ever says. Craig’s usual fallback is to arguments of incredulity. In this I actually think he might be honest. I don’t think he has ever actually understood or understands how anyone can not believe in god. In his debates, whether it is a trick or not, he shifts the burden of proof onto the atheist position as if theism is philosophically the default position.
Well Craig has been debating since he was in high school. In any such formal system there are always way of gaming the system, and Craig knows them all.