The Debate You Didn't Hear About
The average Christian is not an avid reader of philosophy. Even fewer Christians would bother to read atheist books, blogs or articles, and unfortunately sometimes we miss things that should be grabbing our attention.
One of my heroes is Dr. William Lane Craig who is probably the most feared Christian apologist in atheist circles. Richard Dawkins (who wrote The God Delusion – a NY Times best seller) has refused to debate him so many times it’s really embarrassing to their side. Finally on Friday night at Notre Dame, Sam Harris (author of The Moral Landscape and another giant in the atheist field) agreed to debate Dr. Craig regarding whether you can have objective moral values and duties if there is no God.
You probably didn’t hear about this in church, none of your friends were talking about it, it wasn’t going to make the news anywhere – but I can tell you – in the apologist/atheist/philosophy circles this was a big deal.
Dr. Craig absolutely annihilated Sam Harris on this. Seriously – it wasn’t even close. Sam finally abandoned the topic altogether and started trashing the God of the Bible, the problem of evil, etc – none of which had anything to do with the topic at hand. What was so awesome was that Dr. Craig knew he could not lose this debate, reasoned that Sam would just use it as a platform to trash the Bible, and pulled out a copy of a book called Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan and suggested everyone read it if they wanted answers to what Sam was saying. He was then able to say that none of this had anything to do with what we were debating, reinstated both premises in the argument and easily triumphed.
We need more people like William Lane Craig that understand physics, logic, theology, and academia every bit as well as our atheist counterparts do. How many kids at Notre Dame left that debate with a renewed faith in God? How many atheists, agnostics and enemies of Christ are doubting their position after such a thrashing? All I know is that I was personally blessed watching that debate and found myself thanking God repeatedly for Dr. Craig.
One of my heroes is Dr. William Lane Craig who is probably the most feared Christian apologist in atheist circles. Richard Dawkins (who wrote The God Delusion – a NY Times best seller) has refused to debate him so many times it’s really embarrassing to their side. Finally on Friday night at Notre Dame, Sam Harris (author of The Moral Landscape and another giant in the atheist field) agreed to debate Dr. Craig regarding whether you can have objective moral values and duties if there is no God.
You probably didn’t hear about this in church, none of your friends were talking about it, it wasn’t going to make the news anywhere – but I can tell you – in the apologist/atheist/philosophy circles this was a big deal.
Dr. Craig absolutely annihilated Sam Harris on this. Seriously – it wasn’t even close. Sam finally abandoned the topic altogether and started trashing the God of the Bible, the problem of evil, etc – none of which had anything to do with the topic at hand. What was so awesome was that Dr. Craig knew he could not lose this debate, reasoned that Sam would just use it as a platform to trash the Bible, and pulled out a copy of a book called Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan and suggested everyone read it if they wanted answers to what Sam was saying. He was then able to say that none of this had anything to do with what we were debating, reinstated both premises in the argument and easily triumphed.
We need more people like William Lane Craig that understand physics, logic, theology, and academia every bit as well as our atheist counterparts do. How many kids at Notre Dame left that debate with a renewed faith in God? How many atheists, agnostics and enemies of Christ are doubting their position after such a thrashing? All I know is that I was personally blessed watching that debate and found myself thanking God repeatedly for Dr. Craig.
I have listened to many Podcasts from Craig on the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of God and lots more. He is amazingly gifted by God at what he does. I wish the other side had presented a better speaker since some of the reviews by atheists that I read said that Sam H did a really poor job