Dishonesty

After watching my first debate featuring William Lane Craig - the 2011 affair with Sam Harris, I came away impressed with Craig's organization and preparation, ability to speak clearly, and his apparent skill at addressing objections and more-or-less controlling the flow of a debate. Although I thought - and still think - Harris did well, and made many good points, Craig appeared to "win" the debate.

Other bloggers and commenters were not so impressed, and pointed out the dishonesty that Craig exhibits in apparently all of his debates. I've since come to recognize this.

A prime example of Craig's dishonesty is on display in a 6 minute video snippet at
The A-Unicornist blog. The topic of the video is "Objections So Bad I Couldn't Have Made Them Up - The World's Ten Worst Objections To The Kalam Cosmological Argument" - a talk Craig gave to Biola University students. The full talk can be seen on Dr. Craig's website Reasonable Faith.

The snippet at A-Unicornist tells us all we need to know. Since Craig is citing "infidel websites" and YouTube as the folks making the criticisms, I'll grant that he's not just attacking a straw man. After all, any nut with a blog can make any insane claim they want - present company included.

The problems arise early:

At 2:20, he is defending the soundness of Kalam by saying that the argument was being defended 1000 years ago by Al-Ghazali - as if that makes it sound because Al-Ghazali said it. Classic argument from authority.

At 2:50 he starts arguing that what he believes makes a good argument is that the argument's negation is not true. He ignores all other possible arguments. Classic False Choice.

It is just not believable that a Doctor of Philosophy, such as Craig, is not aware of the fallacious arguments he's making. He's speaking from prepared notes, for dog's sake.

It's probably just Craig being dishonest - for Christ.