That Smarts
Here's Doug TenNapel's account of a recent debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dr. William Lane Craig. He clearly backs the latter. In fact, TenNapel refers to Craig as "the smartest living Christian." Here's how he characterizes Craig's arguments:
Dr. Craig’s arguments are true and well-reasoned by [sic] difficult to comprehend on a first hearing.
What are these arguments? Here's TenNapel's list:
1. The Cosmological Argument; Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. God is the best explanation for that cause.
2. The Teleological Argument; The fine-tuning of the universe is so improbable that law or chance aren’t adequate explanations. God is the best explanation.
3. The Moral Argument; If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Rape isn’t just culturally unacceptable, it’s actually wrong.
4. The Resurrection of Jesus; The vast majority of historians generally agree that the tomb was empty. Separately, the vast majority of historians generally agree that Jesus appeared to people post-mortem. The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” is the best explanation of these facts.
5. The Immediate Experience of God; Belief that God exists may be rationally accepted as a basic belief not grounded in argument.
Hmm. I don't find #1 or #2 that convincing, but at least I agree they're arguments.
#3 doesn't sound like an argument to me. It's more like saying if the answer to the question isn't yes, I'll feel bad, so it must be yes.
#4 is a response to a different debate. I must admit I'm shocked to read the vast majority of historians agree on the empty tomb, etc. In fact, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of historians either have no opinion on the issue, or believe it has not been proved.
I'm not sure if I understand #5, but it doesn't sound like an argument either. Sounds more like if you feel it, it must be true.
Craig also takes time out from the debate to do a little evolution-bashing. This is the smartest living Christian? Next time maybe it would be better to get someone who's not so smart.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
10 Comments:
Christopher Hitchens is fortunate in his choice of enemies(something he picked up from covering the Clintons?)
Its funny how weak arguments are when you're only addressing people that already agree with you and want to be proved correct.
Substitute the Greco-Roman pantheon of Gods or astrology as they thing to be proved and 4 out of 5 of his arguments work equally well. #4 doesn't but then its not really an argument but a mere assertion of belief as fact.
It seems to me the first two arguments support Agnosticism, and are pretty much undefeatable. No one can prove God doesn't exist, and no one can explain how, or more importantly, why everything exists. God is at least a more satisfying answer than "because."
If one agrees with my take on arguments 1 & 2, then argument 3 is simply an observation that mankind is better off if it at least behaves as if there is a God. It's a utilitarian argument that better to accept the truth of something for which there is some evidence (the existence of everything) vs. embracing ignorance (which is what Hitchens seems to have done based on the article). Argument 5 is really the same argument - it is rational to accept the existence of God if it makes your life experience better.
Argument 4 seems out of place. Historians is interesting - because it simply acknowledges that there are historical reports of a Jesus whose tomb inexplicably was found empty. There is no archaeological evidence - just eye-witness reports. But the "histories" are far removed from the event, and suspect because of the obvious purpose for which the documents were written (ie, not a recording of history). Similarly, "Common Sense" is of limited value as a historical document
There have been recent interesting experiments where you can use technology to create an artificial out-of-body experience. I think that speaks to the impending end of argument #5 the same way the progress of biology continues to chip away at the objections to evolution.
Denver Guy: Whether or not the first two arguments are defeatable isn't the point. If the arguer has the burder on proof on his side, it's not good enough for him to say you can't prove him wrong, especially since he'd be asking you to prove a negative. He should convince you his arguments are right.
As to that last sentence in your first paragraph, are you using "sayisfying" to mean "more logical," because I'm not sure if I see your argument. (Occam's razor might suggest that admitting your ignorance is more "satisying" logically than creating lore around it.) And if you mean "satisfying" as more pleasing, then how does that prove anything?
I don't see at all your claim that your view on 3 depends on how you look at 1 and 2, or, for that matter, how 3 has been proved in any way.
I agree 3 can be seen as an (unproven) utilitarian argument. In fact, that's its flaw. On the other hand, I have no idea how it relates in any way to the "existence of everything."
As to 4, I think we agree, though I wouldn't say there are eyewitness reports so much as there are stories about eyewitness reports.
As to 5, couldn't you say the same thing about Santa Claus?
I'm not sure who the burden of proof is on. It isn't as simple as the difference between proving a negative and proving a positive. I would say the burden of proof is on the person who is tryingto change or make up somebody else's mind. So both Hitchens and Craig had a burden in the debate format.
Craig argues that if one admits that something began, by definition something had to cause it to begin. That seems a fairly logical argument, though it does not prove God, it just proves the need for some unknown mechanism to be the "beginner."
Argument 3 is not an argument of proof. It is an argument that the burden of proof is on the atheist if the atheist wants to change my mind, because my life is better (more satisfying, less distressing, more driven by a sense of moral purpose) believing in God than not believing. So unless Hitchens can prove me wrong, I see no reason to give up my belief (which is an entirely rational response, imho).
I agree with you that arguments 3 and 5 are not arguments for the existence of God. They are arguments for why it is rational to believe in God absent proof (just as it is rational, imho, for children to believ in Santa Claus - because it makes them happy, teaches them important lessons, and generally improves their enjoyment of life). Only when the existence of Santa Clause is disproved does it become irrational for someone to believe in him.
As for 4, much of history, especially ancient history, is like this. Did the Greeks attack and sack Troy? We have some evidence that they did, but Homer's writings are rightly judged suspect. There are some people who believe they have found the archeological foundations of the city of Troy, but that is only a little help. Some people say the remains of Noah's Ark are on a mountain in Turkey.
Let me add, I don't believe in lying to oneself to make oneself happier. Believing in something that has not been disproved, if it improves one's experience of life seems completely rational. But believing in something demonstrably false (like the world is Flat or 6000 years old) is not rational.
"I'm not sure who the burden of proof is on."
If one person claims not to know the answers, and the other one claims he does, I'd say the burden of proof is on the latter.
If one person says my explanation is based on what we know about the natural world, and the other says my explanation is based on supernatural claims that we can't truly understand, perhaps the burden should be on the latter.
"Craig argues that if one admits that something began, by definition something had to cause it to begin. That seems a fairly logical argument,"
I was hoping not to have to get into the content of this (ancient) argument, so let me just say, quickly 1) I'm not sure if anyone's admitting Craig's premise, 2) adding another entity to the "explanation" (that itself is more amazing than everything else you have) doesn't explain anything, but merely deepens the mystery--better to just admit your ignorance--and 3) as others have noted, saying "everything needs a cause, therefore there must be something that doesn't need a cause" isn't an airtight argument.
"Argument 3 is not an argument of proof. It is an argument that the burden of proof is on the atheist if the atheist wants to change my mind, because my life is better (more satisfying, less distressing, more driven by a sense of moral purpose) believing in God than not believing. So unless Hitchens can prove me wrong, I see no reason to give up my belief (which is an entirely rational response, imho)."
This isn't an argument for anything except the very questionable claim that living with a belief that there's no reason to believe is correct will make you happier. If that's so, why not study all the belief systems of the world, find which one creates the most happiness, and start beliving that?
"As for 4, much of history, especially ancient history, is like this. Did the Greeks attack and sack Troy?"
This really isn't the same thing. There are different levels of historical proof. Whether or not there was a war on Troy is very different from claiming certain tales about what happened at Troy are true. And we can be pretty certain about the general outline of. say, Julius Caesar's life (as much as we can be certain about any ancient history) because it's attested to in so many ways from so many sources.
"Let me add, I don't believe in lying to oneself to make oneself happier. Believing in something that has not been disproved, if it improves one's experience of life seems completely rational."
So you do agree then that it's rational to look at all non-disproved religions and pick the one that makes you happiest?
Even if we assume that Dr. Craig is the "smartest living Christian" (obviously, I don't actually believe that), TenNapel is not. So if you want to critique these five arguments, you need to actually critique the original arguments -- not TenNapel's two-line summary of each argument.
# 1 appears, in five main variations, in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim medieval philosophers, most famously in Thomas Aquinas. The full version of this argument in five versions is several pages long in Aquinas, and has been debated for centuries since then.
As an aside, this argument cannot prove the existence of Zeus or Apollo, or for that matter the Mormon God, because the devotees of these gods do not assert that their gods created the entire universe (matter, energy, shape, and consciousness) ex nihilo.
Argument # 2 is the best argument (IMO, the only good argument) from the contemporary intelligent-design advocates. This argument, in its full form, looks at specific cosmological constants (e.g., the Planck length, the angle formed by the three atoms of the water molecule, the distance limit of the strong and weak nuclear forces) and analyzes how the universe would differ if these numbers were slightly different. Again, many accept and many reject this argument, but TenNapel doesn't even attempt to summarize it.
# 3 is Kant's argument, and IMO is false and indeed absurd.
# 4 is based on a false premise. In fact, there is a sizeable fraction of Christian historians who believe in the Resurrection but who also believe that the question of the empty tomb and/or the resurrection appearances cannot be resolved by purely agnostic methods of history. (FWIW, I actually disagree with them. I myself believe not only in Jesus' resurrection, but also that an objective historical analysis without pre-assumptions about the possibility of miracles finds the resurrection to be as well-attested as many other ancient events that we accept as simple fact. But obviously, that is not sufficient to turn it into a proof. And even if one could prove that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, it's questionable whether one could then convert that into a proof of God's existence. Case in point: Mormons, again, who do believe in the Resurrection but not in an omnipotent God who created everything.)
# 5 (depending on the full details ) might bedefensible as an argument, since it addresses matters of high epistemology, and contemporary philosophers are near-unanimous in admitting that there haven't yet been any satisfactory solutions to high epistemology questions.
"So you do agree then that it's rational to look at all non-disproved religions and pick the one that makes you happiest?"
Yes.
In fact, as I became a Christian after age 27, I think this is what I have done. Now I haven't read every document of every one of the thousands of religions out there (I feel justified in discarding some based on the synopsis : ) . I have read some of the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Zen texts, and read about other faithes. In fact, with so many varints of Christianity out there, I believe I have done what most people who have faith have done - sought out major defining principles and focused on those.
I understand that there are some people who find greater happiness in being more dogmatic and exclusive in their faith - that's their choice. I would never try to convert someone who was happy where they were (including atheists).
P.S. I have not suggested that it is wise to adopt a belief for which there is no evidence whatsoever (that's a strawman). I'm just saying that a belief that cannot be difinitively proven can still rationally offer benefits for the believer. There is some evidence for the existence of God, starting with the existence of the universe and life itself, and the eye-witness accounts of thousands (millions?) of people who assert direct communication, in one manner or another, with a supreme being or creator. Some of them are even very smart, nobel prize winners and the like.
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