Does Good come from God II – Harris vs Lane

_{David L. Hagen

April 8, 2011

Atheism, Creationism, Design inference, Ethics, Evolutionary psychology, Intelligent Design, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Science}

Part 9 of 9 – Harris vs Craig – Does Good Come From God
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Apologetics 315 has posted the audio link the Full Debate MP3 Audio here (120 min)
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I found the debate a fascinating test of technical debating skills vs red herrings and emotional appeals. (PS please post links to transcripts when available.)

This debate provides an interesting framework within which to examine the ID related question:
Does Information come from an Intelligent Agent?

Harris claimed that the axioms of science are accepted and obvious to everyone and provide the basis for proving there is no god. However, atheists commonly presuppose naturalistic materialism.
How can one scientifically examine if an intelligent agent exists or is causative, if one a priori excludes intelligent agents from possible causes?

I posit that in testing for an intelligent cause, one must presuppose:

1) Intelligent agents exist. (e.g. humans)
2) Intelligent agents can influence nature. (e.g. this post)
3) Some intelligent intervention can be detected. (e.g., forensics)
4) An intelligent agent may be a cause for an observed phenomena.

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April 11 See JonnyB’s follow on post:

Sam Harris Delivers Riveting Oration Championing Deism

Comments

Harris was terrible. On almost exactly the same subject, Shelly Kagan was much better against Craig. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l69QN7ixmM&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1 The best part comes when they sit and start conversing.radix78_{April 8, 2011
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OT: jon specter, I got a video just for you showing that atheists and Theists can get along; A bipartisan group of legislators won't give up on Oregon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZi4JxbTwPobornagain77_{April 8, 2011
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Laws of Logic; Five main laws of logic: A. Law of Non-contradiction B. Law of Identity C. Law of Excluded Middle D. Principle of Sufficient Reason E. Principle of Causality You cannot think correctly without following the above five laws. The first three were used by Aristotle to refute skeptics objections to syllogisms. The last two are added by the German logician Liebniz. Law of Non-contradiction A cannot be both B and non-B at the same time and in the same sense. "Nothing can both be and not-be" Propositions cannot be both true and false. Law of Identity x is x. Whatever is x, is x. Law of Excluded Middle Either x or non-x. Every proposition must be true or false. Principle of Sufficient Reason Everything that is has a sufficient reason why it is. (Both why it exists and what it is.) Principle of Causality Everything that acts or changes has a reason or cause why it acts or changes. Can also be stated: Everything that begins to exist has a reason why it exists. ie. Stuff just doesn't pop into existence. http://www.gregcaughill.com/philosophy-wiki/learn-logic/34-the-laws-of-logic.htmlbornagain77_{April 8, 2011
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Craig as usual made a compelling, detailed opening speech, establishing definition of terms early and supporting his premises. Also, he wisely exposed Harris' attempt to redefine "good" in a way that enables his view of human specie-ism. In fact, Craig did well to demonstrate early on the moral ineptness of Harris' view of beneficial well-being (which is subjective and apparently defined only by Harris). In the process, Craig showed that Harris' view really isn't objective, and that morality, even according to Harris, cannot have a material foundation. As part of Craig's positive presentation of his view, I think he made an excellent case that some moral values are objective in the philosophical sense, and for the immateriality of the origin of objective moral values. In Craig's second presentation, he correctly exposed Harris misunderstanding between "universal" and "objective" moral values. Harris' presentation. In short, he was well spoken on his opening speech, seemed sincere. However, he seemed to ignore Craig's previous expose of his attempt to arbitrarily redefine "good" as being somehow equivalent to feeling good or pleasure or otherwise lack of displeasure (a purely Epicurean concept). Also in his opening speech, he wasted time deploring his perceived double-standards in others who espouse morality, but of course did not hold himself to that any standard. In this regard, his time would have been better spent making a positive case, instead of merely complaining. And in his opening speech he said religion is not necessary for universal morality. But Harris does not espouse universal morality, but objective morality. Apparently he wasn't sure what he believed during the debate. That might explain some of the redefining of terms and obfuscation going on later in the exchange. Regardless of whether his negative opinion of religion (or God), and evasion of the term "good" as Craig used it and "objective" in the philosophical sense (also how Craig used it), Harris was just boring. I was really hoping for a positive case for objective morality having a foundation not of a maximally moral Being, otherwise referred to as God. What I heard was evasions, and unfortunately ignorant, and rather childish complaints about how God enslaves people and alleged, unjust massacres, complaints which reflect a infantile degree of understanding of the context in which these complaints have their source. Craig delivered the goods, Harris didn't.Bantay_{April 8, 2011
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One teacher commented, after seeing the Red Herring tirade of Harris, that he was going to show this debate to his class for a classic example of how NOT to debate. Besides Harris's refusal to honestly address the main topic of the debate, the other thing that annoyed me most about Harris is that he continually acted as if materialistic atheism had sole propriety on science and logic. This is simply ridiculous. Logic is a unchanging immaterial entity and science would be impossible without logic. Yet if 'material' is held to be the only 'real reality' (which is a empirically false view), then logic in its pure transcendent form would be held to be merely illusory. i.e. we would not trust that our reasoning within science was trustworthy in the first place since we would not trust logic. This is another reason why Christian Theists were at the forefront in establishing the scientific revolution!bornagain77_{April 8, 2011
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Sam Harris Delivers Riveting Oration Championing Deism

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