This is a great little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kIacYxNo2g

i dont like this lane guy. he doesnt sound like a complete moron

Some of the questions are hilarous. Particularly the Jewish guy with the 5-minute monologue "question" and the guy Avalos responded to with only "If you phrase the question respectfully, I will answer it".

Edit: And, wow. That last questioner. Just. Wow.

Nice link, thanks.
Certainly better than Kirk Cameron and the guy with the molestor moustache vs the Whore and the striped shirt tool.

The complete debate is in 2 parts and can be found here:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/...=audio_visuals

Craig did something here in his opening statement I've never heard before and am not really happy about. He started by giving an incident from another Avalos debate in which Avalos used clearly underhanded techniques to try to undermine his opponent on issues that weren't relevant to the debate. Craig justified this by calling it a "preemptive strike" to hopefully prevent Avalos from doing the same thing in this debate. I think Craig would have been better served to keep it in reserve and use it if necessary, but I think it weakens his image to use it this way. Guess he's human, after all.

As for the debate itself, Craig completely dominated Avalos, even more than usual - somewhat like the Carrier debate, though Avalos was at least a bit closer to the debate topic.

The following is a brief summary of some of the things Avalos talked about in the debate:

He equivocates on the word naturalism. Believing that natural law exists doesn't make one a "naturalist". Naturalism is a worldview, believing there are natural causes isn't.

The baby analogy - not on point to the resurrection for several reasons. The main one is that it isn't unusual or inexplicable for babies to appear on doorsteps but it's very unusual for the facts of the resurrection to occur, including the spread of Christianity based on the empty tomb+resurrection appearances. A better analogy would be if you had looked outside your door 10 seconds earlier and there was no baby, then there was - the fact babies are normally produced by humans and placed on doorsteps by them would then be a less likely explanation. Also, just making up an explanation, such as invisible Martians, has no analogy to the Gospel.

His exposition of "the stories of the resurrection" vs the resurrection itself is inexplicable for someone with Ph.D. credentials.

He's completely wrong in his attempt to prove the resurrection story only began in the 2nd century or later. He's almost completely alone among scholars to make that allegation.

In one of his secondary speeches he made the rather astounding assertion that you can't use empirical rationalism to defeat empirical rationalism because anytime you use logic you're using rationalism and anytime you use a datam you point to empiricism. A true howler. He was obviously struggling mightily to understand what Craig was even talking about, and failing badly.

He spent a ton of time on the Aramaic (Greek) phrase for "the first day of the week" to show Craig was wrong in one of his books, though Craig didn't use that point in the debate. Even if Avalos is right about this, so what? This debate is the only time I've ever heard this and I've listened to a lot of Craig on the resurrection - it just isn't a major point, Craig could just say "I was wrong" and it wouldn't affect his argument at all. Generally, when you find someone majoring in a minor like this it's because they have nothing else to say - and Craig makes this point, admitting there were some misprints in his book. After the debate, Avalos spent a lot of time trying to show that Craig was quibbling about calling them "printer's errors", I don't remember where I saw this, but it has even less relevance than the translation argument itself.

I'll have to go back and dig through and double check, and if I'm right, post the exact time, but I believe I heard Craig tell Avalos in part 12 that "you can't pick and choose; either the text is historically correct or not."

Interesting.

Even if you wish he hadn't done this, it seems to have served its purpose. You fully accept the way he framed it (i.e. Avalos did something "clearly underhanded") just like he attempts to frame his debates by starting out declaring that "there are 4 facts that we know are true..." Sure, buddy. Sure we do.

Its on Avalos' blog. I think it is perfectly clear what the relevance is. I think Avalos stated it outright. His claim is that Craig tells lies and uses them to support his beliefs in debates. Avalos claims to have caught Craig out in a specific lie right there. He attempted to explain what he thought were lies and/or mistakes with regard to some of his history and use of claims about ancient language to support his case, and also explained that he realizes these things are unimpressive unless you are an Aramaic student/expert. But fortunately he does not have to ask you to take his word and be impressed, because, he claims, he has caught Craig out in a much simpler, easy for everyone to understand, lie.

He claims that Craig's publisher says it is impossible that there were printing errors. That the final product consists of photocopied reproductions of only exactly what was given to them.

I can't vouch for any of this ****, but I think you are putting your head in the sand when you imply it is not relevant.

Regardless of how well he made the point during debate, Avalos' central idea is that Craig is taking it for granted that what is depicted in the bible is true and accurate, and then asking the question, "How can I best explain these events?"

An alternative approach might be to assume that the stories are tall tails, until/unless there is strong evidence that they are not. Just like the Lord of the Rings. Or the Koran. Or The Little Mermaid. Or ("crazy") people that claim to be Jesus Christ, and require that you listen to them and take heed.

People are capable of telling lies. People are capable of being fooled. And as far as I can tell, every single generation in recorded history shows that ordinary men and women can be motivated to kill, rape, or die, for other ordinary human beings. I don't see any reason to assume that Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Sathya Sai Baba, or check the news, use google, and find 100 other people who have killed or died, or had others kill or die at their request, and claimed to have magic powers, or to in fact be a god.

Its all part of what people do. It doesn't mean that people's feelings ("I know I am Jesus" or "I know that god is real") should be elevated to special status and thought of as credible for any particular reason (i.e. I can't falsify it; life would have no meaning if I didn't believe it; my parents are good and honest people and they believe it, etc.).

Ug.

This is a good point. The lord of the Rings is a good example. If we the book depict true events, we could probably find heaps of evidence to that effect.

However if we hypothise it to be true and accept that it is false when large enough portions are disproven...this is not a popular method in religion however, and frankly - we all know why.

The claim that has really made me lose respect for Craig, is when he says his christian beliefs are based on probability. He claims the existence of the christian god is the most probable explanation, for the events occurring around the time of the death of Jesus.
He argues, that the resurrection story and testemony from early christians, makes it is more likely that an allmighty god exists, than the religious claims of the bible being fiction.

Lets disregard the question of whether christianity is true. Based on what is known today, it is certainly about as big an underdog to be so, as anything can be without being specifically disproven.
Any honest christian will admit this, they just have to belief in spite of that.

I read some of the controversy involving what amounts to typos about the Aramaic language in one book of Craig. In the heat of the debate Craig used the words "printers errors". What he meant, as he later explained, was that there were typos in the text, probably done by whoever typed up the manuscript. He's admitted there are these typos in the book. He's explained how they got there. The fact Avalos has jumped on this in such a big way tends to justify Craig's opening statement in the debate - it's clear Avalos has little or no substance and relies on tricks to try to swing the debate his way. Pathetic.

If you lost respect for Craig because you think this I don't see how you could have ever had respect for him. Perhaps you would like to demonstrate why it's an underdog.

Its not like I started out thinking he was great, I had just heard he was respected.
I already knew I would disagree with what he had to say, but his reputation for sticking to logic had me interested, as that seems incompatible with religion to me.

The reason christianity is an underdog to have the right explanations, is because they contadict observable reality.

These extraordinary claims are only based on the writings of true believers. The same type of true believers, that have written many other similar, yet mutually exclusive magical stories.

Miracles and god interacting with the world, has not been observed in times of reliable history writing and scientific capability.

The bible is supposed to be at least god inspired, and yet plenty of scientific opinions from the bible have been proven wrong by modern science.


If a man makes extraordinary claims that can not be checked.
Claims that would completely change reality as we know it if true.
The conclusion that he is lying or mistaken is the most likely to be right.

I am not saying Craigs religious beliefs are wrong, though obviously I believe they are, but claiming he has probability on his side is just mistaken.

Avalos seems a little ... adolescent in his blog, in the subjects he chooses to write about, and his writing and debating style. Granted.

And he may be totally off about this supposed lie that he thinks he caught Craig in.

But how does any of that suggest the bolded text?

If he had any real substance he wouldn't need to resort to these tactics. But look at the debate itself. Avalos offered no substantive arguments against Craig's arguments, he offered no evidence that the resurrection didn't happen, and he continually strayed from the subject matter itself, for instance, the amount of time he spent on Matthew 27.

If you're referring to miracles then they are not repeating events that can be observed at anytime, like sunrise. But they don't contradict reality because the claim is they are performed by God and His use of reality isn't a contradiction of it.

One of the key features of Christianity is its historicity. That was the main point of the debate. Evidence for the resurrection isn't just the testimony of believers but involves the facts of history, such as the growth of Christianity while it was making claims of verifiable historical facts.

I keep hearing this and yet have never heard anyone establish it. You can, of course, say the Bible claims the earth is flat as in "not a globe" but that is easily solved by interpretation. What scientific claim in the Bible has been shown false?

The only time I've heard Craig use the math of probability was when he answered a contention by Ehrman in their debate. As he has explained, he doesn't like using the argument because he thinks it's weak, but is valid to counter the type of argument Ehrman made. Beyond that, when he uses the world probability, he isn't talking about math calculations, but the kind of subjective idea of probability we all use for inductive reasoning. Your bare assertion that it's improbable is not a refutation of the cogent arguments presented by Craig.

I'm about half way through the youtube videos of this debate and its my first exposure to Craig. I'll give them another listen through maybe over the weekend and make some notes, but on a first listen I must say that Craig at the very least doesn't sound like an idiot. He is very quick witted and clearly has a lot of information at his disposal.

That being said, my first impression is that he sounds good, but that distracts from what he is actually saying. But his arguments are a bit disingenuous.

For example, he takes Avalos to task for not directly arguing that the resurrection of Jesus didn't occur. Now, Avalos was stuck a bit by the topic of the debate: Resurrection: fact or fiction. A better title would have been: Resurrection: Likely or Not? Taking Avalos to task for not being able to directly prove a negative is disingenuous at best. Unless we suddenly find the gospel of the guy who wrote "Hey! Ignore all these other gospels! I was there and these guys are making it up!" all we can do is examine the evidence that does exist and try to figure out how persuasive it is.

He provides a bunch of other alternatives to how to explain the biblical stories, including: they just made it up. His point is: before we look to the skies, let's see if other explanations make more sense.

Craig admits that authors in those days use a "legendary" technique to describe certain events. He then tries to pick and choose what was legendary embellishment and what was history. Interesting that he does not address whether the entire document is legendary embellishment.

So my first impressions are that Craig talks a good game, but he is a very clever orator who is skilled and distracting his audience from the substance of his work.

If I'm up to it I'll try and listen to the debate again and bring out some better examples.

I think you are parroting Craig, and I think you (like Craig) are glossing over the obvious point made by Avalos. That is, Craig's points are in regard to a story, not in regard to established facts. That really is the point. I think the whole deal with Matthew was an attempt to show that Craig picks and choses which parts of the bible he believes, but I don't really care; I'm not interested in arguing their debate again right here.

How do you know about miracles? Because they are required for those stories to be true? And those stories are true? So miracles must exist?

Its just like when Craig explicitly states that if all the evidence that he sees as weighing in in favor of Christianity were suddenly proven false, it would not change his faith; that he believes (paraphrasing) based on personal revelations.

If you take it for granted that empirical rationalism is not required, and that "god can do anything" is a foundation, you've really pulled the rug out from under any and all debate on the subject.

All that Avalos or anyone else can argue is that the world seems to make sense without the christian bible being true; and the christian bible seems to just be something people made up, as people do, and as they have done with other religions before and after.

If you have your own reasons for believing miracles, I honestly can't conceive of anything I could say or do that would make any headway with you.

Of course, you could totally convert me by making a prediction, moving a mountain, stopping the sun, etc., in a way that seems to contradict the very foundations of all we know about the world.

Is the growth of Islam pretty good evidence that it is true and correct?

What do you mean by "making claims of verifiable historical facts?" I actually don't know how to interpret that.

I think if the name of the game is "how can I make this text fit the facts," then there is probably no scientific claim whatsoever in the bible that will be shown false to your satisfaction.

Because you're right. Thinks like the biblical claim that the earth is flat are "easily solved by interpretation."

I still haven't gone back and found the (in my opinion) damning quote of Craig telling Avalos that you can't argue against scripture with scripture, because it is either all true or none of it is... A word-by-word analysis of what he says may leave him some weasel room to get away from the statement... but that was my impression of it during my first listening.

It is not just about the amount of people, but the growth vs time. Also, the growth of christianity occurred in a time where the facts could still be verified. big difference.

Didn't the real growth in Christianity start after the Roman Emperor Constantine made it illegal not to be Christian and started persecuting non-christians sometime in the 400s?

Every world religion has started with a handfull of followers, and has had impressive growth spurts to get to the number of followers they have today.
Islam was started around 600 A.C. and is as big as christianity, if growth over time is the key, you you should convert now.

The gospels were written down 50-100 years after the death of Jesus, and it did not get to Europe till what? 1000 A.C. or so. So it is not really true that the facts could be verified.
Not that there were that many facts to verify.
The koran, on the other hand, was written in Mohammeds lifetime.

Every religion can tell you why Their holy book is better than the competition, the reasons will be subjective and make sense to the believers.

There is not an ounce more objective truth value in the bible, than in any other religious book.

It is not about just growth over time, but growth vs time. Islam had no explosion comparable to christianity.

That's not even close to correct. Christianity was in Europe as well as Asia pretty much immediately.

There was another "explosion" caused be Constantine in the 300's, but that is not what I was referring to. And I would agree that this sort of explosion would not hold any weight, just like the numbers of islam mean really little.

Actually, I think the fact that the roman empire adopted it and began persecuting those of other faiths is exceptionally relevant to why Christianity is the dominant religion in the West today.