Craig/Hitchens Live Tweet PBP

Here is my play by play from Twitter.  If you combine this with Melinda Penner’s PBP, you can get a pretty good picture of how the night turned out.  Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I am more familiar with Craig (though I’ve seen Hitchens before and read one of his books) and he was more linear in thought, so I have more tweets from Craig than I do Hitchens.  Not trying to snub Hitch.  See my review.

BTW, seems like the consensus on atheist blogs is that Craig won the debate only because he is a skillful debater.

Heavens….ta…mergatroy.  I find this incredibly disingenuous.  That’s kind of like whining, “uh, yeah, we woulda crushed you guys if our linebacker wasn’t injured.”  Or better yet: “we woulda crushed you guys if our water boy wasn’t sick.”

Maybe, just maybe, Bill Craig does well because he has a solid case.  What happened on April 4 has happened many times over; it is not an isolated incident.  While he has had even-handed debates with a few atheists out there, and while there’s no doubt his debate skills help him, if his arguments are as weak as you guys keep saying they are, then someone with the intellect of a Hitchens or Carrier would easily be able to spot the flaws and take advantage of them.  They’d easily smoke him, instead of looking so unprepared.  Perhaps truth has something to do with it.  Just a thought.

Anyway, on with the show:

Holy smokes! 3 hours before the debate and the line is almost around the building.

I just got interviewed for a documentary about the Hitchens/Craig debate. What fun! The atmosphere is electric.

Good to hear you are moderating, Hugh. I’m excited for it all.

I just walked past Hitchens sitting in Biola’s coffee shop.

I’ve been to many debates and I’ve never seen anything like this. Over an hour before the debate and the crowd is huge.

I just sat down. It’s packed tight as sardines.

There is a notes handout giving Craig’s basic premises, but the sheet for Hitchens is blank. Interesting.

Ready to go. Hazen just noted that this is being seen in over 30 states and 4 countries. Hello Stockholm and Sri Lanka!

Hazen is cracking jokes left and right. That’s why I like the guy.

Hazen is introducing Hewitt. Glad he’s moderating. He knows both gentlemen well.

Hitchens on stage. He has a pair of bananas with him, and is smiling wrly…hmmm

Craig opening statement…commends Hitchens for coming into this “den of lambs.” lol

Craig: says he will approach question philosophically.

Craig: no good argument that atheism is true. There are good arguments that theism is true. Debate not about social effects of religion.

Craig: going into his five arguments. There is nothing new here. He’s been making the same opening stmt for the last 20 yrs.

Craig: cosmological argument: the universe began finite time ago, not eternal.  An actual infinite is impossible.

Craig: atheist proponent of big bang must believe universe began out of nothing. Where did the universe come from?

Craig: cause must be personal, beyond space and time, causeless.

Craig: cosmological argument gives us a personal creator of universe.

Craig teleological argument–constants in universe fall into a very narrow range. Possible sources: physical necessity, chance, or design.

Craig: life prohibiting universes are vastly more probable than non life prohibiting universes.

Craig: constants not due to chance or law.

Craig: debunking multiverse theory for chance.

Craig: no independent evidence for multiverse.  Also, if we are part of multiverse, we’d be observing a different universe.

Craig: moral argument.

Craig: if God does not exist, objective moral values don’t exist. The definition of objective moral value–binding no matter whether we agree.

Craig: citing Hitchens to bolster premise 1 of moral argument–moral values are part of social convention on atheistic view.

Craig: now tackling argument from resurrection.

Craig: If Jesus did rise from the dead, we have a divine miracle and hence evidence of God’s existence.

Craig: there are three facts that most NT historians agree happened. The best explanation is that God raised Jesus from dead.

Craig: going into 3 facts now. He is citing skeptical NT historians who agree with 3 facts.

Craig: attempts to explain 3 facts, like “disciples stole body” have been universally rejected by NT scholarship.

Craig: immediate experience of God…not really an argument, but that you can know God exists wholly apart from arguments.

Craig: examples of properly basic beliefs that can’t be proved–existence of the past.

Craig: that doesn’t mean they are arbitrary though…they are grounded in experience. Belief in God is the same.

Craig: God will reveal himself to those who will listen.

Craig: Hitchens must do away with Craig’s arguments and erect counter arguments for his own case.

Craig: therefore, theism is more probable.

Hitchens giving opening statement now.

Hitchens: arguments all essentially same no matter who you are arguing with–Muslim, Christian, Hindu, etc.

Hitchens: there is a distinction between an evidentialist and a presuppositionalist that is a false distinction.

Hitchens: if we were having this debate in 19th century, Craig would know next to nothing about physics.

Hitchens: therefore he would have then grounded his beliefs in faith, scripture, or natural theology.

Hitchens: now it is demonstrated that we are not designed. We evolved through random mutation and natural selection.

Hitchens: now theists say evolution is part of the design. They have changed their argument. This suggests Craig’s arguments are ad hoc.

Hitchens: test of a good argument is that it’s falsifiable. Changing the argument therefore is a bad sign.

Hitchens: “retrospective” evidentialism–everything, in due time, can fit in our worldview. Says this is bogus.

Hitchens: talking about large extinction numbers as evidence that there’s no design.

Hitchens: DNA in common with other species evidence of evolution.

Hitchens: We came perilously close to joining the species that have become extinct.

Hitchens: how is all this extinction and death the will of a good powerful Being?

Hitchens: can we believe that all that was done with us in view?

Hitchens: this is a “peculiar case of solipsism” and it’s arrogant. Like saying “at least we are here.” doesn’t work for Hitchens.

Hitchens: Craig saying atheists try to disprove God is a misrepresentation of atheism.

Hitchens: Can’t get from deism to a “God that cares” for humans.

Hitchens: Dr. Craig must show “Certainty.” must show that there “must” be a God.

Hitchens: Hitch himself only has to appear as a skeptic….my thought: this is pure bosh.

my thought: absence of evidence doesn’t show evidence of absence. hitch is being presumptuous.

Hitchens: citing Craig now in support–witness of H.S must take precedence over arguments and evidence.

Hitchens: still citing Craig in support of Hitch’s contention–men are without excuse, therefore…

Hitchens: you are a miserable sinner, but take heart..the universe was designed with you in mind.

Hitchens: these two things are incompatible.

Hitchens: this shows that evidence is of secondary important…’we’ll take it if its avail but its not needed.’

Hitchens: this shows that belief is based on faith.

Hitchens: talking about times when religion has been wrong in science in the past…not clear what his point is.

Hitchens: most physicists are uncertain about spatial temporal elements of big bang.

Hitchens: was there pre existing material for being to work with or did he will it? Who designed the designer?

my thought: who designed designer–yaaaawwwwnnnn.

my thought: hitch using moral terms like capricious, cruel, etc in relation to universe.

my thought: wondering how he grounds such strong moral terms in his atheistic worldview.

Hitchens: pointing to ‘capriciousness’ of design as counter point to teleological argument.

Hitchens: ‘capriciousness not due to fine tuning and designer would be guilty of crime.

Craig rebuttal

Craig: hitch agreed that there is no good argument that atheism is true.

Craig: that doesn’t prove atheism…only agnosticism at best.

Craig: theory of biological evolution is irrelevant to theism.

Craig: no need for believers in scripture to hold to special creation, nor is it a retreat caused by modern science.

Craig: Augustine suggested there is no need to take days in Genesis as periods of 24 hours.

Craig: his doubts in evolution are scientific, not religious.

Craig: “if evolution did occur, it would be a miracle.” He gave numbers for us to grasp the improbability.

Craig: theist open to following evidence where it leads, but for the naturalist–”evolution is the only game in town.”

Craig: talking about hitch charge of waste in universe now.

Craig: population of the world at the time of Christ…only 2% came before the advent of Christ.

Craig: in fullness of time God sent his Son.

Craig: stage was set for Christ…shows wisdom of God.

Craig: hitch uses false meaning of deism and theism.

Craig: deism is a specific kind of theism.

Craig: his arguments are a cumulative case for theism.

Craig: says his arguments don’t have to show certainty, counter hitch.

Craig: arguments are the “best explanation,” not certainty. He doesn’t allow hitch to pidgeonhole him.

Craig: appealing to arguments and evidence when “showing” someone that Christianity is true.

Craig: arguments are deductive…premises guarantee conclusions.

Craig: hitch didn’t dispute many of the premises in the arguments.

Craig: counters hitch assertion that scientists are uncertain about fine tuning..giving quotes of phycists.

Craig: temporal duration of something irrelevant to whether it’s designed.

Craig: hitchens himself affirms moral statements…does affirm objective value but without basis.

Craig: no response from hitch to resurrection argument.

Craig: on very solid ground in affirming 3 facts…best explanation is God raised Jesus.

Sorry, my computer shut down a bit so I missed part of Hitch rebuttal

Hitch: don’t need to prove ‘asantaclausism,’ so why should I have to prove atheism?

Hitchens: Craig’s arguments are ad hoc.

Hitchens: if you grant Craig’s arguments, you must grant religions like Mormonism that are different from Christianity.

Hitchens: problem with morality and religion–can’t prove anyone behaves better if they refer to God.

My thought: hitch misunderstands argument…that was a red herring and a non sequitur both.

Hitchens: person of faith has no advantage in moral behavior in explaining morality as God’s product.

Hitchens: talking about golden rule.

Hitchens: moral argument isn’t advanced by saying atheist can’t know morality.

My thought: again, he misses the argument and confuses epistemology with metaphysics and metaethics.

My thought: he does this all the time….gah!

Hitchens: we have freewill…why–I take refuge in “philosophical irony.”

Hitchens: moral argument is degrading just like Christian explanation for free will is.

Hitchens: harping on “heavenly north Korea” now. God takes our decisions away from us.

My thought: he really has a “cosmic authority problem.”  He talks about this in all the places I’ve heard him.

cross examination now

Craig: how do you distinguish the different varieties of non theism..atheism, agnosticism, verificationism, for example?

I missed hitch reply…I was moving and lots of noise

Craig: are you an atheist, or do you merely withhold belief?

Hitch: agnosticism is evasive…hitch waffling.

Craig presses hitch: what is your view?

HItch: seen no evidence, God therefore doesn’t exist.

Craig: do you have justification for affirming God doesn’t exist?

craig: do you agree that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?

Hitch: not talking about unicorns, but a big authority.

Hitch: evidence for God must be magnificent.

I reached my tweet limit and Twitter wouldn’t let me tweet, so I missed hitch cross examination…sorry for that. I missed a lot.

Back on now..hitch pressing Craig on which religions and denominations he thinks are wrong.

responses now

Craig: haven’t heard any arguments suggesting atheism is true. hitch gives no argument for God not existing.

Craig: God is not indifferent to people before Christ. God is preparing the world for Christ.

Craig: they will not be condemned if they exercise faith in true God…they will be covered by Christ.

Craig: they will be judged on basis of info they have…we don’t have to judge them.  We can leave it up to a good God.

Craig: going back over his arguments and covering hitch’s response or non response.

Craig: hitch’s objection that moral argument gives religious no advantage is irrelevant.

Craig: actually, worship of God is a moral duty non believers won’t follow.

Craig: but this isn’t the bottom line…hitch provides no basis for any moral values.

Craig: citing Pigliucci, an atheist professor, to buttress premise 1 of the moral argument.

Craig: I offer hitchens a solid transcendent foundation for moral value.

Craig: resurrection now

Craig: says hitch misunderstood resurrection argument…resurrection argument is “so non-Jewish.”

Craig: correction, resurrection  *belief* is “so non-Jewish.”

Craig: talking about his experience now…justifies his beliefs, just as his experience of outside world justifies his belief in outside world.

Hitch response now

Hitch: resurrection argument that it’s so non-Jewish is too easy…did I get that right? There is lots of noise back here in beginning.

Hitch: Miracles of other religions similar to Christian miracle stories.

Hitch “depressingly easy” to get a religion started in uneducated illiterate people.

Hitch: both of challenges in regards to moral argument stand.

Hitch: apartheid had theological backing.

Hitch: Russian nationalism had theological backing too…there are pictures of Stalin with saint’s ring around his head in Russia.

Hitch: religion is the outcome of unresolved material needs…did I get that right?

Hitch: giving an explanation of how religions can be man made.

Hitch: if all religions died out at same time, all our problems would be exactly the same.

My thought: I beg to differ

Hitch: emancipate yourself from God and you’ve taken the first step to becoming free.

Final speech before q&a

Craig: atheism itself is a worldview…it claims to be true alone and therefore is no more tolerant than Christianity.

Craig: Hitch asserts truth of atheism.

Craig: God hypothesis explains a broad range of human experience–moral, scientific, philosophical, etc…that’s what the God hypothesis “gives us.”

Craig: hitch consistently distorted moral argument…changes the subject to “how do we know m.val?” This is irrelevant.

Craig: moral sense that develops, according to atheism, is illusory.

Craig: Craig “invites Hitchens to become a Christian.” priceless. He says all of the evidence is on one side.

Me: yes I’m biased folks.

Craig: impossible for Christianity to flourish with an occupied tomb because the resurrection belief happened in the public sphere.

Craig: makes an evangelical ending.

Q&A now: Hewitt affirms: there are such things as stupid questions. He is not interested in your opinions, people!

q for Hitch

Is it good that the Bible prohibits sex with animals or is that an example of “dangerous sexual repression”?

Hitch reply: if it’s man made, it is then designed to keep women in repression.

Craig: q illustrates that apart from God, whatever is in nature is right.

Sexual ethic in the Bible is good for human beings.  It is not repressive..cites studies about religious people being more sexually happy.

Hitch: who is the designer? Why does nature see to it that so many people are born homosexual?

q for Hitch: questioner rambling…dude, what’s your question?

Hitch: not taking refuge in notion that sometimes religious people do bad things.

Hitch: rather, there are specific religious injunctions that sanction violence, etc

Craig: can’t assess a worldview based on whether its good for society…he’s interested in truth.

Craig: previous point came from Bertrand Russell, an atheist of past..he said that in reference to Christianity’s positive social benefits…this is ironic that Hitch hits on religion’s social detriments so much.

q for both: what is life’s meaning/motivation/purpose in absence of transcendent being?

Hitch: complete nonsense that you can’t have purpose without supernatural being.

q for Craig: how is life without God “absurd”?

Craig: purpose of life isn’t to serve God, but to glorify and *enjoy* him forever.

Craig: there is no *objective* meaning on atheistic view…can have relative, but not objective meaning.

Craig: on atheistic view, any purpose you foist on world is illusory.

Hitch: I’m willing to accept, on evidence, conclusions that make us uncomfortable.

Hitch: meaning of my life is to help people achieve freedom from oppression.

Hitch: railing against “fellow primates” who try to tell him what to do.

Hitch: they know perfectly well that this is the only life we have.

Hitch: if there is going to be a resurrection and all will be righted in the end, why do you care what happens here?

Craig responds to Hitch challenge.

If God exists, humans have intrinsic value and we have reason to treasure them as ends in themselves.

Craig garners applause from crowd.

Hitch: gives alternate explanation for human affection based on humanism: “this is the only life we’ve got.”

Craig: if Christians commit moral atrocities, they are acting inconsistently with their worldview.

Hitch just asked Craig how to explain Christians who do bad things…I think…I missed the exact question.

Hitch hitting on Christians who justified killing Jews based on scriptural injunctions.

Craig: again, Christians were acting inconsistently with Jesus’ ethic.

Hitch: big percentage of folks who took part in final solution were practicing Catholics.

q from Christian “playing devil’s advocate.”

Craig: why can’t God intervene in extreme suffering…problem of evil, in other words.

The existence of God not logically incompatible with exist of evil.

Craig: no philosopher has brought out hidden assumptions that would make it logically contradictory.

Craig: atheists who press the problem of evil do so probabalistically.

Craig: hidden assumption on this view problematic.

Craig: How could the atheist *know* that God would not permit evil in world?

Craig: atheistic probabalistic argument makes hasty judgments.

Craig now hits on the emotional problem of evil.

Craig: God not impersonal ground of being or one who is distant…he suffers with us, enters into human history on the cross.

Craig: cross of Christ puts problem of evil in a different perspective.

Hitch: “I come to you as the only person who has represented the devil pro bono.” funny

Hitch: hitting on a moral atrocity of rape now, and a Christian’s weak reply to what she went through.

Hitch: how could a divine will accede to that?

q from Hewitt now: why do so many people come out to see this kind of debate?

Hitch: emergence of big theocratic challenges in modern world..that’s one explanation.

Hitch reply gets large applause from crowd.

Craig’s answer: we are seeing the ‘fruit of modernity’ that hasn’t brought good things.

Craig: we see bankruptcy of naturalism and the question of God’s existence is now all the more important.

Craig: we are beginning to question naturalism…seeing a revolution in philosophical thought.

Still some wrap up left, but I’m shutting down now…it was fun y’all!

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