And Slaters Go Plop

Last night Dale and I went to see a debate between Bill Cooke and William Lane Craig. The moot was “Is God A Delusion?”.

Craig (arguing the negative) was given the first 20 minutes in which to make his case. Cooke followed but didn’t engage any of the points that Craig raised and, while entertaining at times, didn’t really do a very good job of it from a debating sense. I’m no expert mind you. But without challenging Craig’s assertions he allowed them to stand and I felt that Craig’s performance as a debater far exceeded that of Bill Cooke’s.

Over the last few years I’ve become reasonably familiar with the arguments Craig used in his opening and have decided to give them the respect they deserve by going over them one by one in the next few entries. Below is a summary of Craig’s arguments:

1. The Cosmological Argument
   This is the argument that everything that begins must have a cause. The universe began so it must have a cause and that cause is God.
2. The Teleological Argument
   This is the argument that God must exist because the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of life. A slight change in some of the constants in nature would mean that the universe wouldn’t sustain life.
3. The Argument from Moral Objectivity
   Here it is argued that objective morals are impossible without the existence of a God. If a moral can be shown to be objective rather than subjective then the best explanation is that of a moral law-giver outside of nature. We all agree that raping children is objectively wrong => God exists.
4. The teachings and miracles of Jesus Christ The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
5. God can be immediately known and experienced
   These last two are the weaker of his arguments but they go towards strengthening the first three arguments which, if proven, would suggest that the God of Christianity is in fact the God of the universe.

I hope I’ve done justice to Craig’s five main points by way of overview. I’ll go into each one in more detail in future entries and introduce Craig’s propositions and conclusions at the same time. In the meantime you can see a good overview of these and some of the other arguments for the existence of God over on that fount of all infallible knowledge; Wikipedia.

(Also, I’m only going by memory here and waiting for the videos to become available on YouTube so I can properly represent William Lane Craig’s arguments before going into them further. If I’ve remembered incorrectly please feel free to chime in.)