Meh, I dunno if it's worth the time to tease out the problems with your comment here, but in brief you aren't comparing like with like. I wasn't afraid of hell while I was a Christian as I didn't believe I was going there. Not being afraid of something is great IF the fear is unfounded, but dangerous if it isn't. As a new but ill-informed and uncommitted atheist I was concerned that the danger might be real.

I don't think anyone is under any illusion that I think theism is anything but nonsense. If there is a difference in how our arguments are received it is probably that I generally assume that the theists are intelligent people who believe they have good reasons for their worldview, and that there is a reasonable chance they can change my mind.

If you have done this you have not done it well enough for me to have noticed. Though, to be fair, there's only a couple of atheists who I think do a good job on this, and neither is very well known.

Well, there was more that I didn't say. Even if I'm wrong, I'm a good person and lead a moral life so I strongly doubt that I would have anything to fear. Even I decided Pascal was right and I should believe just in case, which religion should I choose? How many people live in fear of divine consequences and are actually still at risk because they're following wrong faith? It's a minefield and I consider that the quality of my life is greatly improved by not having to negotiate it because I don't have to jump through all the hoops required by the various religions and still risk being wrong. Should I choose the religion with the most hoops (like the Catholics with Baptism, Confession and Last Rites), to stack the odds in my favour?

Also, it's my strong suspicion that all such aspects of religion are nothing more than very human control mechanisms - but - that's as much as I'm going to say because I can already imagine what you're thinking.

I haven't tried to do that here.

Ugh. Obviously I don't think Pascal's Wager is a good argument now. I was relating a story about my previous views. This is (was) a discussion about how Christians react when they become atheists. It isn't relevant to my anecdote that Pascal's Wager is flawed, what is relevant is how it motivated certain behaviours at the time. Now, several years later, I think there ARE some advantages to atheism. But I wouldn't say that "no fear of hell" is one of them because I didn't fear hell when I was a Christian, as obviously I thought I was going to heaven.

I seriously doubt it.

By 'here' do you mean 'RGT' or 'in this thread'?

RGT.

Nah non Christians cant be "persecuted" in that way. When a boss ask you to lie its easy for non Christians to lie since we have no morals.

On tonight - live streaming available.

This was a very interesting debate. I'm not sure it's going to be available for free on video but I do recommend it.

I can't say who won on the technical scientific issues. I think they may have been talking past each other but it got way past my knowledge of physics (which is mostly zero), so no comment.

Carroll said a couple of things that surprised me. First, he said that theism isn't illogical or irrational. Second, in the Q&A one guy asked Craig why theists don't keep their religion to themselves, why do they bring it to other areas of study, etc. After Craig's response, Carroll said(major paraphrase here) that if he was a theist it would be central to his life and worldview and he would try to find its relevance to everything he experienced. No theist could have said that better.

The debate itself was very civil and each mostly tried to respond to the other and to stay within the debate topic. I think Carroll strayed from that a couple of times, not on the civility but by going outside the topic, but not in a major way. Most refreshingly, he never once brought up the slaughter of the Caananites.

Here is a link to the debate.

Edit: The debate proper doesn't start until 24:00

It's on youtube w/out the intermissions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXdYtAwH33k

Live-blog / summary. Have tried to be fair and avoid too much editorialising. Typos likely.

Craig's Opening Statement

States that it is obvious that there is no conflict between science and religion. Cosmology doesn't prove god exists, but makes theism more probable, specifically by supporting non-theistic premises that play important roles in theistic arguments e.g. "the universe began to exist".

Here he presents his first argument

Kalam (this version is new to me, but is as presented by Craig)
P1) If the universe began to exist, then there is a transcendent cause which brought the universe into existence.
P2) The universe began to exist
C1) Therefore the universe had a transcendent cause of its existence.

Defines the universe as "all contiguous reality... spacetime and its contents"

Says he take it that P1 is obviously true, and the real argument is whether P2 is true. Makes the point that knowledge that something is true does not imply that we are certain something is true (very reasonable).

Craig then quotes Carroll at length on the idea that science doesn't prove things, and that theories can always be rescued by ad hoc arguments, but theories that need such rescuing will tend to fall to the wayside as they fail to be useful scientific theories. Dangerous move, let's see how it works out for him.

Craig then quotes from cosmologists such as Krauss, Velenkin(?) that believe that the universe began to exist. Says that eternal cosmogonic models (where the universe does not begin to exist) have failed. Defends the BGV model which requires (so he claims) that the universe began.

Then turns to Carroll's model where random fluctuations spawn baby universes. Craig claims this violates the unitarity of quantum theory by allowing information to pass between universes. Then brings up the Boltzmann brain problem and a problem with its positing a thermodynamic beginning which Craig suggests has the same philosophical import for theistic argument. This all adds up, Craig claims, to empirical support for P2 of the Kalam.

Now he turns to the teleological arguments

P1) The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical neccessity, chance, or design.
P2) It is not due to physical neccessity or chance.
C1) Therefore, it is due to design.

Craig then argues very briefly that premise 2 is supported by contemporary cosmology and concludes this first part.

Carroll's Opening Statement

Opens with a joke about hoping the chapel roof doesn't fall on his head during his arguments and gets a laugh from the audience. Gets a bigger laugh and applause when he point out that, if that happened, he would update his belief accordingly.

Carrol starts by saying that his aim is not to win the debate. He states that the relevance of god to cosmology is simply not one that professional cosmologists take seriously. His goal is to explain why cosmologists don't take it seriously.

Carroll defines the conflict as between naturalism and theism. Naturalism = there is the natural world. Theism = there is the natural world + god (and possibly other non-natural beings). Carroll claims that naturalism is "far and away the winner" when it comes to cosmologogical explanation and gives three reasons:

A) Naturalism works (accounts for the data we see)
B) There is evidence against theism
C) Theism is not well-defined.

His focus in the debate will be C. He then claims that although if you ask a particular theist what 'god' means they will often give a specific rigourous definition, problems set in when connecting these definitions to the world we see around us. This is where, on Carroll's view, a seemingly infinite amount of flexibility sets in, making theism poorly defined.

Turning to the Kalam, Carroll disagrees that P2 is the real issue and wants to challenge P1 as he believes it is false and Craig provided no explanation or argument for it. But he also believes that it is 'not even wrong' in that the sort of vocabularly Craig uses has no place in cosmology. Carroll asserts that "this sort of Aristotellian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2500 years ago, but now we know better". He point out that modern cosmological textbooks don't contain reference to 'transcendent causes'; they contain differential equations. Modern cosmology involves building mathematical models that account for the data and there are self-contained models of the universe that do not require an external cause, a few of which Carroll explains. Carroll stresses that we don't neccessarily think that these models are the right ones yet (or cosmologists would have packed up and gone home) but that mathematical models using differential equations are the right way to talk about cosmology, not arguing from first principles of (empirically false) ancient Greek physics.

Carrol then turns to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem that Craig invoked in his first part. Carroll claims that Craig's assetion that the BGV implies the universe had a beginning is false. What it says is that, at a certain point in the past, our ability to classically describe the universe breaks down.

Moving on to Craig's claim that Carroll's cosmological model violates unitarity, Carroll says that this is flatly false, and that unitarity is "the whole point" of his model, which has a wavefunction that describes the evolution of the universe that is perfectly unitary. On the topic of a thermodynamic beginnging, Carroll claims that this is equivocation as the thermodynamic 'beginning' in the model happens in the middle of the history of the universe. Wrapping up this section, Carrol asserts that Craig quotes Hawking out of context on the issue of conservation of information, which was a specific claim about the nature of black holes and not a claim about cosmology.

We then take a quick detour as Carroll shows a slide of some of the questions that motivate cosmological research and notes that theism does not even attempt to answer these questions. IMO, this is a bit off-topic as, thus far, Craig isn't arguing that theism provides cosmological explanatory value, only that theism is supported by cosmology.

Carroll moves to the fine-tuning argument, praising it for "playing by the rules". However, Carroll claims it is "still a terrible argument". He attempts to justify this claim with the following points

1. Fine-tuning for life is dubious at best. We don't know what sorts of life are possible under different conditions.
2. God doesn't need to fine-tune anything. On naturalism life is purely physical, so supervenience on particualr physical constants make sense, but on theism life is not purely physical and such supervenience is not neccessary for life (and indeed is, in other arguments, widely claimed by theists to be false!).
3. Apparent fine-tuning may turn out to be false. There are examples of this: we used to think that expansion rate of universe had probability of 1 in 10^60. But using general relativity there is a rigourous derivation which gives the probability as 100%. So other apparent fine-tuning may also turn out to be resting on incorrect mathematical models.
4. Multiverse models solve the apparent problem. These universes are predicted by models that were made to solve other problems not to do with fine-tuning. These models also make definite cosmological predictions about features of the universe e.g ratio of dark matter. Theistic fine-tuning solutions do not even attempt to make such definite cosmological predictions because theism is not well defined. Carroll wraps up this point by claiming that Boltzmann brains are not a universal problem for cosmological models but are a useful way of identifying bad models.
5. Theism fails as an explanation for fine-tuning. Theism should predict that constants fall right in the 'sweet spot' for all values, whereas naturalism + weak anthropic principle predicts that some values may excessively generous. The latter is what we observe. Closing up, Carroll then runs through a slew of other non-cosmological examples of data that fits better with naturalism than theism, which I won't transcribe here as they are probably all familiar to RGT and are a bit off-topic to the debate subject.

Craig's First Rebuttal

Craig points out that Carroll's closing remarks were off-topic (which is fair). That done, Craig turns back to the Kalam, expressing surprise that Carroll rejects P1. Craig claims that if the universe began to exist, either the universe had a transcedent cause or it popped into being uncaused. He then adds that if this is the price of non-theism, the non-theist are welcome to it. On a editorial note, I'm surprised at Craig doing this, as it seems like that he himself is biting a huge bullet (essentially admitting that P1 is not "obviously true") in order to avoid the charge of using Aristollean metaphysics. But ok.

Craig goes on to reiterate that P2 is true. To editorialise a bit again, this seems like a poor response, as Carroll has not claimed that the universe did not have a beginning, just that until we know we are confident we have the right model we can't reject eternal models on first principles. Craig shows a slide with a diagram of the Carroll-Chen model, claiming that Carroll's model shows a beginning of the universe. Craig again cites Vilenkin's comment that eternal models can't be right. The expansion of the universe, on Craig's view, supports a beginning of the universe.

Craig responds to Carroll's claim that his own model w/r/t information conservation and Hawking's comment w/r/t black holes are not related. Craig says that Carroll's model still doesn't work because of Boltzmann brains, and claims that Carroll admits he can't do it.

Turning to fine-tuning, Craig lists some scientists who have defended the reality of fine-tuning. Craig then claims that Carroll has himself defended the reality of fine-tuning, but merely explains it away with the multiverse. Craig then says that if the multiverse is true then Boltzmann brains will dominate other universes even if they don't dominate this one.

On the generous constants issue, Craig says that the fine-tuning argument does not imply that intelligent life is the purpose of the universe.

Re-iterates Boltzmann brains, and summarizes that this is not a debate about naturalism vs theism, but about whether cosmology supports naturalism more than theism.

Carroll's First Rebuttal

Carroll goes back to his three points in support of his side of the debate:

A) Naturalism works (accounts for the data we see)
B) There is evidence against theism
C) Theism is not well-defined.

Carroll claims that Craig's objections to A) are based on a misunderstanding of science, and that his objections to B) are based on Craig using C)

On A) Carroll re-iterates that from the POV of science, all we need is mathematical models that account for the data and that further explanation from outside those models is not required. Carroll says that Craig has just insisted that "yes it is" which is not an argument. Uses the analogy that looking at a cosmological model and asking "but what is the CAUSE of the model" is like looking at someone taking a photo with an iphone and saying "but where does the film go?" It's not that the answer is difficult or inscrutable, it's that it is the wrong sort of question to ask. On modern cosmology, the universe is defined as all there is (or the multiverse is all there is) so it just doesn't make sense to ask what caused the universe.

Moving on to the Carroll-Chen model, Carroll says he is the first to admit that his model has problems, but none of the problems are the ones that Craig raised. Craig said it's "not really eternal". Carroll claims that this is false, and he already pointed out that Craig equivocated on "beginning" and "thermodynamic beginning" which Craig did not respond to in his rebutall. Carroll repeats that the unitarity argument Craig gave is false, and the quotes Craig used to support it were not about unitarity.

Carroll then gives an example of a bouncing cosmology which is infinite in time and does not come into existence and asks Craig to explain why this model can't be past-eternal. Carroll then says that we might be wondering if Craig didn't mention the BGuthVilenkin theroem a bunch of times which states that the universe can't be past-eternal. Carroll then presents a slide with a photo of Guth - one of the authors of the theorem - holding a sign that says he believes that the universe may well be eternal. Lol.

Carrol turns to Craig's 'gotcha' moment where he quoted Carroll saying the entropy of the early universe is fine-tuned. Carroll points out that his argument was not that the universe has no fine-tuning, it is that it is not fine-tuned for life.

Defends that the multiverse is speculative but falls naturally out of cosmological models. Notes that Craig does not understand the multiverse models: these models do not entail that anything possible will happen in some universe, and so the Boltzmann brain problem is barking up the wrong tree.

Finally Carroll addresses the charge of wandering offtopic by giving example of plausible non-cosmological predictions that theism would make that are not found to be true. Carroll claims that his point was not to show that theism makes strong predictions, his point is that because theism is not well-defined, it does not make strong prediction and lends itself to ex post facto and ad hoc arguments to prop it up when we find the world is in accord with the strong falsifiable predictions of naturalism.

Craig's Closing Statement

Craig wants to stress that he does not think god plays an explanatory role that competes with scientific theories, but that cosmology supports various theologically-neutral premises in theological arguments.

Kalam:

Craig says he is astonished that Carroll would reject P1 of the Kalam. Craig offers three arguments in support of P1. First, he claims that it is a "metaphysical first principle" that being cannot come from non-being. It is inconceivable. Second, if universes can pop out of nothing, why can't bicycles and Beethoven? Finally, all the empirical evidence we have supports the metaphysical principle.

Craig then says that it is fallacious to claim that properties of parts of the universe do not apply to the entiriety of reality. Craig then turns to Carroll's model but shows a different diagram and claims that the two diagrams are contradictory because of the arrangement of the arrow of time in the diagrams (one points in two direction, one points in the same general direction though diverging).

Craig then says that although the BGV therom is only about classical spacetime, he hasn't heard a good response to his claim that a quantum gravity model would have to have had a beginning.

Recap of the unitarity claim, and recap of his claim that his model is incompatible with the BGV theorom. Recap of the Boltzmann brain argument.

On the entropy issue, Craig claims that it is plausible that aliens exist throughout the universe, so the entropy would fit with being fine-tuned for life.

Carroll's Closing Remarks

Confesses a bit of frustration as Craig just recapped arguments Carroll believes he already dealt with so says he will take the opportunity to speak directly to the Christian audience.

But first he notes that Craig repeatedly claimed to be "astonished" by the claim that universes don't need outside causes and quotes David Lewis that "I do not know how to refute an incredulous stare" and says that he gave an explanation of why this is the case. Carroll claims that "popping into existence" is not the right phrase to use when talking about the beginning of the universe. The right phrase is "There was a first moment in time", which is a much less astonishing claim. The question is then "Are there models like this?". Carroll always laughs away the claim about his diagram, asserting that Craig has not understood what the arrows are representing. On Boltzmann brains, Carroll reiterates that Boltzmann brains are a model-dependent problem, and in this model they are not a problem.

Addressing the audience, Carroll points out that very few people become theists because they think theism provides the best model of cosmology. There are better reasons to become a theist: community, sense of the transcendent, fellowship with fellow man etc. 500 years ago, Carroll would have been a theist. These days, there is not empirical support for theism. So what should a modern theist do in light of the finding of science? One thing would be to deny science, as the creationists do. A second way is to deny the implications of science and to say none of the finding of science has altered the fundamental view of reality put together 2000 years ago. Carroll see's two problems with this approach. First, it's wrong, as he has tried to show in this debate, but strategically it's a bad move as it marginalises theists as a part of the wider intellectual community. This is an important time for discussing the future of our species, and clinging to outdated beliefs may isolate theists from being part of the discussions. But there is a third option. We admit we were wrong 2000 years ago. But, this person could reasonably say, religion is much more than just theism. There is a place for insight about the human condition, to feel camderadrie with your fellow man. Perhaps naturalism can learn from religion and the lives of the saints. Naturalism may have replaced theism, but has not replaced religion. The lives we lead now are not dress rehearsals. What matters is what we can do to make the world better. There are hard questions of meaning and morals. Naturalism has picked the low hanging fruit. We will get there faster if we all climb together.

Wrist to tired to comment much tonight, but I think this is the first debate WLC has decisively lost.

For those interested, Carroll had a moderated conversation with a Christian he actually spent most of his time agreeing with. Certainly a good example, imo, of what a philosophically- and scientifically-literate Christianity looks like.

zumby: thanks for the play by play.

Yeah thanks zumby, been super busy but meaning to get to this debate as I have a great deal of respect for Carroll on theism.

I do regard the Shelley Kagan debate as a pretty clear loss as well.

I'd like to hear NR's thoughts on the debate.

ETA found them. Sunday morning...

This is all pretty non-committal, man. OK, you're out of your depth on the finer cosmological points (me too) - didn't it seem to you that Craig was, also? Not in some fussy way that you would obviously expect, but in a way that made a few of his sallies seem more misinformed than merely vague or overly simplistic (as you'd expect from someone short on detail but correct in substance)?

Do they call him Craig the philosopher of time? Nah. Do they call him Craig the expert on Islamic theology? Nah. You apologise for one genocide...

Was fun. I'm also have a lot of respect for Carroll.. certainly the best advocate for naturalism since Sagan. I've linked to it a lot of times in the past, but the Moving Naturalism Forward conference Carroll organised is essential viewing for any naturalist, as well as any theist who wants to know what the real problems of naturalism are. (Though at ~12 hours long, I understand it's a big time commitment!)

I agree that Kagan won that debate, but imo it was a lot closer than the Carroll debate.

On reflection I think the debate went this way for the following reasons.

1. (Just to get it out the way) Carroll is right. Now, if being correct about the facts and having better arguments were the primary decider on winning debates, I would feel that Craig loses most of his debates. So I just want to note this briefly and move on to the other issues.

2. The Kalam. Craig seems to have only prepared to defend P2 of the Kalam. I guess his thought process pre-debate went something like: Carroll made a past-eternal model of cosmology, so Carroll will want to defend his model, and so I can reformulate the Kalam to make the debate about whether this (or similar) past-eternal models are successful. As Carroll took a more meta approach and didn't defend any model as being 'true', the majority of Craig's opening was wasted. More problematically, Craig didn't seem to have anticipated this meta argument at all, so much of his first rebuttal was wasted by.

3. The BGV. Craig spent way too much time on his claim that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin entailed a beginning of the universe. Once Carroll pulled out his ace of showing that Guth rejects this claim about his own theorem, much of Craig's argument was undermined and Carroll's argument that WLC does not properly understand the cosmology he quotes was immeasurably strengthened (and I do not say this flippantly - Craig understands more cosmology than most people by a long long way).

4. Making false claims about Carroll. There were too many times where Craig either claimed that Carroll's model entailed this or that, or that Carroll had said such-and-such, that Carroll genially dismissed as false. This unfortunately left the impression that either Craig was trying to play dirty or, more plausibly, Craig does not properly understand cosmology. Which bring me onto..

5. Carroll remained affable and engaging throughout, and was better able to put complex ideas into plain English. By contrast, Craig seemed incredulous, out of his depth, and too focused on using as many complicated bits of jargon as possible.

6. Craig never addressed Carroll's three main objections: that naturalism works (Craig did not explain how adding theism to cosmological models is neccessary); that there is evidence against theism (Craig simply pointed out that this was off-topic); and that god is not well-defined (similar to the first point.. Craig was unable/unwilling to make explicit how a theistic cosmological model works).

7. The combination of the above allowed Carroll to address the audience directly, as he had already refuted all Craig's points. I think Carroll's point about how the particular type of Christianity WLC promotes is unnecessarily damaging to the intellectual standing of Christians is something that may well resonate with the audience. I think it's no coincidence that Carroll posted the Hans Halvorson 'debate' during this period; Christians who look up Sean's blog after this debate are going to see a pretty good example of the intellectually respectable Christianity that Carroll suggests WLC fans move on to.

Overall, very happy with this debate, especially the last point.

but.... why don't we see bicycles popping out of nothing!

The subtitle of the debate was "The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology".

If CC proves God exists, fine. If it doesn't, so what?

If WLC is wrong about CC then he should either get better at it or quit using it. Craig himself has emphasized several times that the scientific part of the KCA is minor compared to the philosophical element - after all, the KCA is about 1800 years old, way before there was a Big Bang Theory.

Edit: FTR, Craig is way, way better at physics and math than any scientist is at philosophy or theology - not even close.

The day after the debate SC and WLC continued the conversation with the participation of Rosenberg and Jim Sinclair. Here is a video:


http://observationdeck.io9.com/more-...can-1528667242

which I think is some of that conversation. Haven't watched it yet, don't know if I will, but wouldn't mind a good summary from a knowledgeable, neutral source.

Here is a video from Guth in which to my untaught mind he seems to be saying the universe had a beginning, which, in my ignorance, I tend to think contradicts the cute little clipette SC threw up at the debate showing AG claiming the universe is eternal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVFX5aJSxKg&app=desktop

"We do not think it's eternal into the past" - talking about inflation, i.e., the beginning of the process from which came our universe.

I'm confused. Perhaps it's like the scientific conception of Nothing. There are at last count 81 kinds of Nothing so maybe there are 423 kinds of Beginning.

I've listened to the first half where he says that the question of whether our local universe had a pre-history (pre-Big Bang) is "controversial" and that some models "predict there probably was a pre-history" but that "my model seems to imply there was a pre-history but also a beginning".

This is all a far cry from what WLC was claiming: that the BGV theorem entails that the universe began and that entailment applies to all models. WLC needed that entailment, otherwise he is just endorsing cosmological models that support his P2 and ignoring those models that don't. Whether Guth has changed his mind about what is more probable is really irrelevant; what matters is that past-eternal models are not taken off the table by the BGV as Craig was claiming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=F...YEWXPxrA#t=600

Might help with this (link should open at the 10min spot.. if not skip to 10mins)

Wow Carroll sounds like an excellent debater. Thanks for the summary Zumby (and the link to the 12 hour conference). Now I've got plenty of stuff to watch.

Will update with my input on the debate.

To echo, thanks zumby for the synopsis and for the link to Carroll and Halvorson.

I'd also recommend catching the Moving Naturalism Forward conference from last year, Carroll and Owen Flannagan are very good while the others including Dennet and Pigliucci are also decent. Dawkins was anonymous which will be a bonus for most.

He would get a better grade in a Harvard advanced graduate physics class than any scientist would in a Harvard advanced graduate philosophy class?