A congregant asked me to view a debate between an Atheist and a Christian Apologist (Sam Harris//William Craig). If you Google Notre Dame’s God Debate II: “Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural?” you’ll find it on You Tube. It’s interesting. Here’s my take on it.
At first glance, it would seem that Harris (the Atheist) “won” the debate. What I am conceding by saying this is that Harris seems to have won by his manner and his delivery, hitting the right emotive buttons for emotional suasion. His rhetoric was excellent.
Nevertheless, with regard to the actual question at hand, I believe that Craig (the Christian) made the better argument in terms of reason and pure logic. However, truth be told, reason and pure logic rarely inspires people or convinces people.
I have to agree with Craig and say that Harris does not adequately address the question about the foundation for moral values. Yes, I know that Harris claims that he tried to do exactly that, but he did not do so convincingly. I was not at all persuaded by his rationale.
What Harris does is what everyone does when building an ontological case at its source. He begins with a given, a two-part a priori assumption: (1) We are conscious beings and (2) we want wellbeing. Now, as to the second part of this a priori assumption, wellbeing, Harris says that the axiom (self-evident truth) that goes with it is this: the worst possible misery for everyone is bad!
Craig claims that the foundation for that kind of statement is God. On the other hand, Harris essentially says that there is no need of a foundation for that statement, for it is self-evident. In that sense it becomes a mere truism. His argument therefore is basically a tautology: “The worst possible misery for everyone is bad and it is obviously bad for everyone to experience the worst possible misery, so we must seek humanity’s wellbeing given that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad.”
But that is an assumption that presumes a foundational moral premise, which is precisely the key question of the debate. That is, on what basis can we “authoritatively” say this? In other words, Harris does not actually debate the question at hand; rather, he simply pronounces it as an axiomatic given. In that sense, Craig is correct. Harris never directly addresses the fundamental question, which is: what is the foundation for accepting the moral premise that “the worst possible misery for everyone is bad” (other than the fact that we humans do not like being miserable)?
What Harris does do very effectively is raise all the questions that religious wars and divisive religious doctrines have raised over the centuries: if there is a God, who is this God, what kind of God is God, and how do we rightly and properly come know this God? These are questions touching upon theodicy, epistemology, hermeneutics, historical witness, and divine revelation respecting the intersection between phenomenology and the numinous. He brushes aside these religious questions, as if they have no value worth considering, by summarily asserting that there is no evidence for religious beliefs in the first place. History begs to differ with him on that assertion. Here Harris makes the classic 18th century enlightenment assumption that goes something like this: Today we are smarter than that! The ancients were more gullible and ignorant in their day and therefore believed in things that cannot be substantiated in today’s modern more enlightened world.
Suffice it to say that all these subjects (and more) have been discussed and debated by secular and religious philosophical scholars for centuries. Harris is simply the new kid on the block repeating ancient arguments against any belief in God in the face of the existence of evil. But Harris never addresses the question of the real nature of goodness verses evil, or why there is evil, or why we humans have a moral nature at all (other than to give a nod to evolutionary dynamics—which results in another tautology = “we are moral creatures because evolution produced us that way, and we know that evolution made us that way because that’s the way we are”).
So, no, I am not convinced by Sam Harris’ cool, smart, and well-presented arguments. In short, my conclusion stands with William Craig’s. I’d put it this way: it is true that one need not be a religious believer in God, in order to live as a moral person; nevertheless, as I understand the nature of the universe without God as its creator, I see no valid reason why anyone must or should or have-to choose morality over immorality, for there would be no real moral foundation (an authoritative “Says Who?!”) for choosing to live a moral life as such—other than to feel obligated to choose morality because Sam Harris says that I must.
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