4.5 stars. BEST CHECK
PhilVaz: 4/5
Pigliucci briefly comments on it.
What the hell, interbuttz? This is a GREAT debate and no one talks about it! It has everything: the right debate topic, interesting arguments, great debate structure, almost an hour of Q&A, cross exam (I think) and Craig even does pretty solid compared to his normal performance.
What's more is that Pigliucci does what all debaters should do against Craig - he forced Craig to debate what he really believes: the Christian god.
These two debated before on whether or not god exists and Luke M. labeled that debate as "ugly" and simply stated:
"Another typical debate in which Craig's skills totally smash his opponent. Atheists seem to think they need not prepare for a debate with Craig because he is just another wacko with an invisible friend who grants him magical wishes. I think they are all surprised by how plausible Craig can make such an absurd idea sound."
This bummed me out, cause I love Pigliucci. He's one of my favorite skeptics and he does a great job in his debates against Kent Hovind.
But this is a different debate, and again, it was on the Christian god. ANDDDD Pigliucci was very clear about calling out Craig on this.
OK, the review:
Craig does all his normal arguments he does for most of his debates: the KCA, Fine-Tuning (FTA), the Moral Argument (MA) the res and Personal XP.
Pigliucci does exactly what he should: he comes on and says that this is a debate about the Christian god, so the KCA and FTA are moot. IIRC, he says the same thing about the MA (or at least, I would) but he still covers it in detail and presents another evolutionary concept of morality that, if not the best evo argument, certainly isn't the same one discussed by Ruse that Craig always brings up. He also presents the classic extraordinary claims arguments and critical thinking skills arguments against the resurrection and dismisses the personal experience argument (as he should, though I think he should be more explicit about it as Parsons was in his debate with Craig). He also talks about the KCA and FTA just for kicks.
Pigliucci is Italian and has the weird ability to have a thick accent, but is still perfectly understandable. I had a Chinese structural geology professor like this, he quite obviously had a thick accent but there was never a time where I couldn't understand him, it's a neat phenomena. Anyways, this means that Pigliucci can talk faster than Craig and he certainly does that.
BUT Craig does a solid job, too. I think when he does make his usual sketchy arguments though, they are much more obvious because Pigliucci was quite clear about them debating the Christian god. So, when Craig says that because Pigliucci doesn't address his KCA and FTA, he's conceding those arguments, it falls pretty flat and everyone knows it AND Pigliucci calls him out on this.
Pigliucci also snipes at the Bible - as he should, I can't stress this enough: Craig gets away with acting like he's defending the Christian god with his KCA, FTA and MAs but they can be used for any god or even gods for that matter. In his debates, Craig will respond to critiques to the Christian god by retreats to the possible and defending the philosopher's diety but then come back and talk about how he is defending the god of Christianity. This is why Craig's debate with Law was so interesting: for the sake of argument, we can say that Law's EGH* doesn't rule out some vague deity, but it certainly rules out the Christian god. The difference between Law and Pigliucci is that Pigliucci got Craig to debate the Christian god, so Craig definitely was fighting for his life in this one.
One more thing about the bible: Craig has done this several times, he's tried to get all pissy about people taking the stuff from the bible "out of context" and arguing about the inerrancy of the bible as only a debate tactic. He does this in this debate and this is another thing that falls kind of flat. My only wish would have been Pigliucci nailing Craig more on that than he did in the debate.
This debate also has almost an hour of Q&A! That's quite a bit, and though the moderator was funny, he got a little too snippy on cutting off some of the questioners, Craig even asked if the kid who asked one question could continue asking his question after he went over the allotted amount of time. The Q&A also had the format I like: they had a line for questions to Craig and another for Pigliucci and when one guy was asked a question and responded, the other had time to counter.
A great debate, coulda been a little better but I suggest you all check it out.
Technical: Decent AQ, not sure if there is a video.
A list of mini-reviews of Craig's debates can be found here!
*Law's Evil God Hypothesis is basically that any argument you give for a good god can be used for an evil god...I'm obviously simplifying it so check it out yourself, dear reader!
Another
typical debate in which Craig’s skills totally smash his opponent.
Atheists seem to think they need not prepare for a debate with Craig
because he is just another wacko with an invisible friend who grants him
magical wishes. I think they are all surprised by how plausible Craig
can make such an absurd idea sound. - See more at:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=392#sthash.8fK6VWvq.dpuf
Another
typical debate in which Craig’s skills totally smash his opponent.
Atheists seem to think they need not prepare for a debate with Craig
because he is just another wacko with an invisible friend who grants him
magical wishes. I think they are all surprised by how plausible Craig
can make such an absurd idea sound. - See more at:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=392#sthash.8fK6VWvq.dpuf
Another
typical debate in which Craig’s skills totally smash his opponent.
Atheists seem to think they need not prepare for a debate with Craig
because he is just another wacko with an invisible friend who grants him
magical wishes. I think they are all surprised by how plausible Craig
can make such an absurd idea sound. - See more at:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=392#sthash.8fK6VWvq.dpuf
Another
typical debate in which Craig’s skills totally smash his opponent.
Atheists seem to think they need not prepare for a debate with Craig
because he is just another wacko with an invisible friend who grants him
magical wishes. I think they are all surprised by how plausible Craig
can make such an absurd idea sound. - See more at:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=392#sthash.8fK6VWvq.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment
Don't be a jerk!