Last night's debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig was as droll as it was interesting. The topic was "Are Morals from God", and both being professional philosophers, an exhilarating clash of contentions was expected.
One of the ingredients that made this debate so entertaining was the fact that Craig's script consisted largely on a conjunction of syllogisms which he imagined demonstrated that moral objectivity is conceivable only if one agrees that God exists. This assumption is generally accepted by most scientists and other debaters given that moral relativism has -in a dispiriting and daunting instance of moral concession to Christian dogma- become the prima facie and default purchase amongst modern liberals. Yet, not in the case of Harris, who cleverly utilized his first turn to speak to present his thesis on moral realism rather than to squander precious time exposing Craig's patent fallacies. Sam's notion of morality consists mainly on the acknowledgment that moral choices would not exist in the absence of conscious beings. In this sense it is in utter opposition to Plato's view of Ideals or Forms, as Craig rightly points out, but which in no way detracts from the validity of his claim. Morality, says Harris, is entirely dependent on the contents of our experience, i.e., our ability to suffer and our capacity for well-being. We don't have moral obligations towards rocks simply because we recognize that rocks don't have nervous systems capable of experiencing pain. So if one can agree that sentient creatures do suffer and that there are better and worse ways to avoid such suffering, then one can confidently claim that objective morals exist regardless of subjective opinion or cultural contingencies.
To Craig's chagrin, Harris simply does not subscribe to the popular moral relativism that he is so used to disarming and thus finds himself in great pains trying to find loopholes in Harris' proposition. He starts desperately quoting from Sam's book (although not necessarily quotes written by Harris himself but from authors quoted by Harris), and he finally, to everyones bemusement, triumphantly proclaims to have in his possession a 'knock-out argument' against Harris' non-divine moral objectivity. He then wends on grieving Sam's reticence form responding his straw-man attacks and blathers with singular sophistry for a short time longer before ceding to podium back to Harris.
I must confess I was not expecting Harris to come out throwing blows and jabs so straightforwardly. But he did, and it was in fact refreshingly amusing given Sam's graceful ways to deride faith at its most abject. Exposing the overt ludicrousness shamefully displayed in each of the tenets of Christian doctrine is the best thing Harris could do. "Think about Hell", Sam challenged the audience. He let the words hang in the air for a few seconds thus allowing the public a chance to really conjure up an image of this inferno. That's right, the very idea of eternal fire should give people pause when talking about the infinite love and mercy of a living God. It never does, but it should. He then proceeded to point out the absurdity of a serial killer who right before the end of his life comes to repent and accept Jesus as his only savior, hence earning himself a place in paradise, as opposed to the life-long philanthropist who spent a lifetime helping those in need at the expense of herself, but for whom the doors of heaven will be irreversibly closed as a result of her having been born and raised in the wrong culture or at the wrong time.
Theodicean dilemmas are still alive and pulsing in the veins of theologians, if not their brains. When Craig reassumed his place at the lectern, he conveniently withheld all vindication of the dozens of antinomies between God's commands, the hundreds of contradictions in the Bible, the innumerable horrors and instances of wanton barbarism allowed, if not commanded by Yahweh, etc. Instead, in a most ignominious moment of live-streamed powerlessness, he opted to shirk the problem of evil in front of hundreds of people, who were subsequently recommended rather to read a book about it.
It is not often that one gets to hear the ontological argument applied, not to prove that God exists, but to prove that God is good. I in fact don't think that this frenetical spout was anything more than the sound of the publicly abased hubris of an ineffectual popinjay. To Harris' query "How do you know that God is good?" Craig heedlessly retorted: "because anything that is worth worshipping must be good, and since God is worth worshiping, therefore God is good". And because anything that merits our contempt must be made of guacamole and the devil merits our contempt, therefore the devil must be made of guacamole.
One need not be a brilliant logician to spot the unfounded premises. Yes, the syllogism is valid. If the premises are right the conclusion does derive from them. But in this case both premises are simply asserted as, needless to say, not a shred of evidence exists which bears them out.
The opprobrium did not cease for Craig as the Q&A followed. His situation became even more pitiable as attendants began to produce a number of uncomfortable questions. With regard to one of Craig's analogies on how humans talked about light and darkness before knowing the actual physical properties of light, a young girl asked something to the effect of the following: before humans understood the physical components and behavior of light they would impute their ignorance to the mysteriousness of their gods. Could the same thing be said about our current quandaries with respect to the nature of morality? One had to be there to really savor the awkward boggle of an intellectually dumbfounded man. Craig purported to not having understood the question which bought him a few more seconds to overhaul and rearrange his wooly racing thoughts. After the moderator -who, strangely enough, was seated right next to William Craig which afforded him the exact same faculty for understanding the question- rehashed the girl's challenge in a syntax fathomable by Dr. Craig, the latter expediently leveled the charge that his analogy was being misused. This may well have been the case, but such claim notwithstanding, the question was absolutely legitimate. Was Dr. Craig invoking God simply because we still don't have a fine grasp on morality? Whatever the case, Dr. Craig did not even attempt a response, remaining mute about the issue to the disillusion of many.
Later on a teenage boy wasted his chance to ask a serious question by posturing the roll of a confused kid to whom God had spoken. God reportedly confessed to the kid that "homosexual relations were as good as heterosexual procreative sex". As blatantly histrionic as this was, the kid had a point. After all, doesn't Craig claim that divine revelation is a genuine form of epistemology?
Questions directed at Harris were admittedly facile and uninteresting. The most salient one pertained to skepticism in the face of collectively reported miracles. Sam answered by explaining how "stories of miracles are a dime a dozen". Even to this day there are hundreds of gurus who claim to have divine powers and whose 'miracles' are believed and reported on a daily basis by millions of gullible followers. These interminable allegations of 'supernatural' events are rightly rejected by everyone who doesn't belong to the rabbles who have sadly succumbed to the blandishments and guile of these con artists.
On a last minute direct exchange between Harris and Craig, the former affirms that nothing could be more immoral than a God who visits unnecessary suffering on his creation by burning them for eternity (or something like that), to which Craig -perhaps forgetting that Sam was not another relativist- perfunctorily replies : "But you don't even have a coherent basis for morality! ". And in a signature moment of graciousness Harris can be heard as he quips: "I've just tried to offer you one, I'm sorry.". Act upon which a lovely and gratifying explosion of applause suffused every corner of the auditorium. And on this cheerful note the debate is drawn to a close.
* Please excuse my poor chronological precision and some inaccurate paraphrases. All parts of the debate are now available here.
