TheDiddleyMan

Are there any transcriptions of the Robert Price vs. William Lane Craig debate on the resurrection of Jesus? Was anybody there? Any thoughts about it? I've heard Craig is tough to beat when it comes to the Resurrection. Does anybody know how Price did against him?

Kevin

Toto

I didn't know there was a debate on the Resurrection. When and where was it held?

Craig is a good debater in general, but his arguments on the resurrection are not very good. Price demolishes Craig's arguments in this article from the library, which is 5 years old, and Craig hasn't come up with any new ones.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/stinketh.html" target="_blank">By This Time He Stinketh</a>: The Attempts of William Lane Craig to Exhume Jesus (1997)

The II library has a section devoted to Craig
<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/craig.html" target="_blank">here</a>.

Logan

I myself have been wrestling with purchasing the tapes as by doing so I would be supporting Craig's "ministry" and that seems the only way to purchase the debate. If anyone wishes to take the plunge first and let us know if it's worth it, here's the link to Craig's website of available material:

<a href="http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/resources.html" target="_blank">Willaim Lane Craig Resources.</a>

sotzo

I found the Price-Craig debate to be quite enjoyable and learned much from both sides.

I would offer the suggestion that the reason Craig hasn't offered any new arguments is because none of them have been defeated. Craig gives the same arguments virtually every time he debates. If the arguments were as outdated and easy to defeat as Toto suggets, then everyone would ignore him and he wouldn't have so many willing challengers.

Also, the fact that a person does not respond to an article has nothing to do with whether or not the positions set forth in the article are correct. This seems to be implied in this thread. If that were the case, then we could just wait until our challengers dies to write our rebuttals and then we would be automatically declared the winner!!

By the way, for a rebuttal of Price's "By this time he stinketh" article, see

<a href="http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_01_05_01.html" target="_blank">http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_01_05_01.html</a>

Cheers
-jkb

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: sotzo ]</p>

Wyrdsmyth

What are the arguments Craig uses?

I wouldn't say that because someone keeps using the same arguments over and over then we ought to conclude he's never been "defeated" using those arguments. Often arguments are effectively rebutted, but the persons using them can't see it. There are many popular arguments that are used again and again, even though the logic has clearly pointed out to be faulty again and again. But that never seems to stop people from using them.

In any case, it's not always clear who wins a debate... the impression of who wins a debate can be affected by a number of rather irrelevant factors, such as crowd reaction or personal charisma. A good debater isn't necessarily the best deep thinker. I've seen people debate (or just verbally spar) where I got the impression that the more charismatic, deep voiced, sharp, authoritative-sounding guy with more cheers on his side "scored the most points." And the guy who had a nervous tic, was sweating, stuttered and whose voice cracked obviously "didn't make much of a case."

For this reason, I always think verbal debates are more for show, a kind of entertaining display, than for any real practical use to sort out complex issues or settle philosophical disputes.

Gooch's dad

The resurrection debates are interesting to read, certainly, but whenever I read the fundy side of the debate, or the 'rebuttal to the rebuttal' I just browsed at the tektonics site, I am constantly saying to myself 'not necessarily!'

One of the common arguments throughout any such debate (I was most recently reading the Barker/Horner debate on the same subject) is the Christian claim that 'anybody could have refuted the claims of the early Christians, and obviously nobody did'.

This is pure BS. Can these same Christians provide another case from that same time period, where a religion was shot down because a mass of well-informed skeptics debunked the basic claims of that religion? I very much doubt it.

As Richard Carrier so well demonstrated in <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html" target="_blank">His 'Kooks and Quacks' essay</a> there wasn't a heckuva lot of skepticism at that time. To whit:

The early Christians could easily have invented Joseph of Arimathea out of whole cloth (and Crossan does make an excellent argument for exactly that) along with any other detail of the resurrection story.

So, where is the case of a 1st century skeptical debunking? Hello....?

-Kelly

Toto

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=51&t=000070" target="_blank">Read about them here</a>.

Bill Snedden

J.P. Holding....bleecchh.

Holding doesn't so much "rebut" as he does "ridicule." I see very little worth in the Tektonics site. Not because Holding doesn't occasionally make the good point (he does), but because you have to wade through mountains of sarcasm, insults, hyperbole, and downright purple prose to get to them.

I'd say that the reason Craig continues to use the same arguments five years later is because he and his primary audience (generally conservative Christians) continue to find them compelling. No big mystery there.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: Bill Snedden ]</p>

David Bowden

I especially love the "Lincoln challenge" in response to Dan Barker's Easter Challenge, at the end of that "rebuttal". The argument seems to be: If Lincoln's biographers differ, then it's okay that the gospels differ. The problem is that historians don't blindly accept all of those Lincoln biographies as inspired truth, and they'll write other, better biographies as they reflect on the available data.

Conservative Christians would avoid that at all costs. The apologists do not understand historical methods well (or don't take them seriously enough), nor do they, for purely ideological reasons, desire to hold the the traditional interpretation accountable to scrutiny and possible override if historians decide the facts warrant it. If Craig and his bunch do everything they can to make the gospels exempt from such criticism, this does not testify to the NT's authority, but rather to the likelihood that Christian claims are very weak and would be undermined if (as has been the case) they are subjected to reasonable modern critical examination.

Modern historians admit that biographies are reconstructions, and they understand that ancient chroniclers of whatever cultural background wrote from the perspective of their supernatural-accepting worldviews. Only those sharing a compatible supernatural-accepting worldview can accept at face value the claims of the gospels without a great deal of corroborating evidence.

At no point would an historian say, "Well, there's no evidence to support x claim about y individual, and in fact there's evidence of mythical borrowing and reinterpretation, and numerous contradictions between the accounts, but we'll ignore all that and assert, as interpretive authorities, that x happened in y's lifetime, because the biographies selected by y's later and very devoted followers (and only they) agree it happened."

No. They would highlight what they consider to be unlikely or obviously based on supernatural bias.

If a distant-future "church of Lincoln" claimed that he caught a bullet in his teeth to stave off assassination, and died long afterwards as the result of pouring out his life-spirit for the sake of the newly re-United States, historians of that time would not be likely believe it - even if there were no other record about the end of his life. They would be skeptical, and would categorize the savior elements of any and all biographies of Lincoln under "myth." And they would be absolutely right to.

Skepticism regarding very unusual assertions is the rule, not an aberration, in historical study as in any serious discipline. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" has rightly become the skeptic's mantra in general, because it is a reliable barrier between an otherwise healthy mind and superstitious thinking.

When applying historical standards to the gospel - consistently - it's inevitable that skepticism abounds. It is anything but hard evidence in favor of its own claims, and there is just no outside evidence that its numerous extraordinary claims are true. The skeptical position is the most valid. Faith plays fast and loose with the facts and with the methodology of just about every discipline critical of the traditional story.

Modern critical Jesus scholarship stands alongside the gospel record as an interpretive resource, and will continue to do so, despite apologists' fantasies that all such re-evaluations of the traditional picture can be easily dismissed with rhetorical flourish in a staged debate.

&lt;/rantlike, passionate defense of the integrity of historical criticism.&gt;

-Wanderer

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>

sotzo

In any case, it's not always clear who wins a debate... the impression of who wins a debate can be affected by a number of rather irrelevant factors, such as crowd reaction or personal charisma. A good debater isn't necessarily the best deep thinker. I've seen people debate (or just verbally spar) where I got the impression that the more charismatic, deep voiced, sharp, authoritative-sounding guy with more cheers on his side "scored the most points." And the guy who had a nervous tic, was sweating, stuttered and whose voice cracked obviously "didn't make much of a case."

I agree with you that oral debates are inferior to written debates since you lose the psychological impact of tone changes, presenters' appearance, etc.

However, written debate is not immune from complex sounding arguments that are, in reality, nothing more than showing off. It is often concluded that arguments using lofty vocabulary must be superior to those of more common vocabulary.

Bottom line: critical thinking is essential regardless of debate method.

-jkb