David Hume vs. Sam Harris

[Venom]

I wonder how many people had their minds changed, though? That's really the test.

Well when you don't want to play Craig's game and he forces you into it anyway, the route Harris took was his best chance at influencing the crowd, no?

 

[angrysoba]

I actually thought it was kinda an attractive point raised abruptly by Harris near the middle of the debate onward.

He fought fire with fire, a risky move, but if that's what it takes to potentially win the audience over, more power to him.

Clearly, most of the more well-known atheists before him failed in 'winning' the actual debate, so, Harris resorted to Hitchens' emotional and absurdity appeal to even the odds a bit by grabbing at the audience.

I actually read a few informative blogs talking about how to "deal with William Lane Craig" specifically. Pretty funny read.

Then your opponent will just accuse you of no longer speaking to the argument and will take it as a tacit concession.

A lot of Hitchens' debating opponents concede the debate from the very beginning, Tony Blair, Shmuely Boteach, Tariq Ramadan, by essentially saying that of course religion causes wars, having a legacy is synonymous with having an afterlife and of course Islam is not a "religion of peace" etc... then they try to make irrelevant points such as being religious doesn't mean you can't be good or that most Muslims are peaceful etc... when that was never the issue.

The same is true with Harris. When asked to explain how he has discovered a universal morality independent of God and how he can justify his moral landscape he makes some silly irrelevant comments about how the Bible is full of some of the most horrible behaviour imaginable and has a psychopathic morality at its core. This is irrelevant to the debate.

 

[Earthborn]

I think a very good example of how poorly Harris did in the debate was during the question and answer round. One person asks him how a rationalist responds to two examples of modern miracles. Harris then immediately starts talking about how Jesus' miracles were so long ago and handed to us so indirectly. And then he mentions Sai Baba doing similar things and then asks why so few Westerners are interested in him. All that is irrelevant to the question.

You would expect a rationalist to argue that Sai Baba very likely does simple tricks, so maybe Jesus did too, but Harris doesn't. By mentioning even more modern miracles but not mentioning there may be rational explanation for them, he his undermines reputation as a rationalist. Maybe he isn't one. Maybe he believes Sai Baba actually does magically create dust for the poor and gold rings for the rich.

He may have said that the Miracle of the Sun can be explained by a rare but well-understood atmospheric phenomenon, or something else. A eucharist growing veins from which human blood can be extracted which then can be haemotyped is the sort of miracle that should be enough to convert even the staunchest atheist, so he should have asked for evidence. It sounds rather unlikely... and gross too.

Harris never fails to miss an obvious opportunity to challenge his opponent. Craig is also challenged by someone with a fantastical claim; the guy who claims to have heard God directly telling him that homosexuality is okay. Craig quickly dismisses him as a prankster. Harris could have easily said: "No, Bill. Let the boy finish. And then explain why his claim of having spoken to God is any less believable than anyone else's."

Craig very effectively challenges Harris claims, but his argument has a fatal flaw too. And Harris doesn't seem to notice. His first claim that "if God exists, there is a sound foundation of objective moral values, and duties." is not something he supports very well. Harris doesn't challenge the claim, perhaps because he doesn't want assume for the sake of argument that God exists, or that he doesn't want to challenge there is a sound foundation for moral objectivity.

 

[Earthborn]

Harris resorted to Hitchens' emotional and absurdity appeal to even the odds a bit by grabbing at the audience.

Oh, is that what he did? I thought he resorted to unemotional and unimaginative argumentation to even the odds a bit by making the audience fall asleep.

 

[westprog]

Well when you don't want to play Craig's game and he forces you into it anyway, the route Harris took was his best chance at influencing the crowd, no?

Craig's game was to deal with what Harris was actually claiming, and to try to rebut it. Harris may well have been wise to avoid that game, since he was losing.