AEON
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Saw the Krauss vs William Craig debate tonight, the topic was 'is it reasonable to believe there is a God?'
JT warned me about Craig when I first bought it up, but honestly I thought he did pretty well - I'm an atheist so there were plenty of things he said that didn't click with me (in particular the 'historical facts' of Jesus' resurrection and his thoughts on the veracity of scripture) but I thought he debated pretty well.
Obviously I agree with Krauss and a lot of what he said (though there was plenty that went over my head). There was one quite interesting debate between the two about morality... once they took God out of the equation it seemed that they agreed on a lot of the subtleties and smaller things, though ultimately Craig believes it's a god-driven thing where as Krauss does not ("if Dr Craig suddenly stopped believing in God I don't think he'd go and kill his neighbour all of a sudden").
Dr Craig seemed reasonable to me, and personally I think it is 'reasonable' (in a more loose, less scientific sense of the word) to believe in God, many good people I know do. But I really couldn't connect at all with the two things I mentioned above - the "historical facts" about Jesus' resurrection in particular was just absolutely ridiculous, as were the stuff about scripture... when Krauss rightly said scripture is falsifiable because it is based on writings that may have been mistranslated after being passed on by word, and they were written after the fact... and Dr Craig's only argument in return was that the scholars at the time had a good record and wouldn't lie.
Thanks for the assessment. I agree that the morality argument is more fascinating and possibly holds more weight than the historicity of Scripture (although I do have "faith" that it has been fairly well preserved, but I know I can't reasonably prove that with artifacts).
I do like Dr. Craig and I think he holds his own in these debates. If anything, his ability to debate at least demonstrates that not every Christian is an idiot.
I still think Chris Hitchens is probably the best debater in this arena. I obviously don't come to all of his conclusions, but I just LOVE watching him.