Debate Teacher Reacts: William Lane Craig vs. Shelly Kagan

Don't know if Craig is holding back on purpose or maybe Kagan's caught him off guard. That would be ironic. Welcome back to another debate teacher reacts video coming at you right now. Look if you're brand new to this entire channel, my name is Nate and I'm very glad that you are here.

Definitely check out all the other videos in this channel. I trust that it will bless you somehow. Look wise disciple is the name of the ministry and we're all about living effectively as Christians in today's culture.

My background is in teaching debate. So the goal of this particular series is to elevate the level of discourse in debate whether it's formal debate or it's informal because I think we should be having the best kinds of conversations and exchanging the best kinds of Argumentation.

So at the end of the day if you walk away thinking to yourself you know what the Christian worldview is the one that makes the most sense or you say You know what the atheist worldview or whatever opposing worldview to the Christian makes the most sense.

That's fine as long as we're having those excellent conversations, so that's the goal of the series. I hope that these videos are helping along those lines. Look you guys are calling the shots at this point.

So right now we're gonna be looking at dr. William Lane Craig versus. Dr. Shelly Kagan now already on paper this debate looks pretty awesome. I mean, dr. William Lane Craig obviously has his Doctrine philosophies done a lot of work in the area of Christian apologetics and theology.

Dr. Shelly Kagan is a an ethicist at Yale as I mentioned before cross-examination is where it's at and in this video I'm gonna zoom in on what comes pretty close to cross-exam. So let's head over there right now.

Moral Ontology and the Naturalistic Worldview

Well, obviously a number of questions came up in my talk that.

Would be.

Pertinent to what you shared Shelly in your opening Address you said right or wrong depends upon the whether you hurt other people without.

Justification.

And when asked are these really wrong you answered yes, why. Because it harms the victim. Now I guess my difficulty is that on and I certainly agree that it's wrong to harm people obviously. But it's hard for me to understand on a naturalistic worldview such as I described.

Why on the worldview of naturalism inflicting harm Upon other members of our species is really wrong. It seems to me that this happens all the time among other animals. And so why is it wrong? Peculiarly for human beings to inflict harm on each other.

All right, so let's start with that.

Suppose that.

My three-year-old nephew walks into your house take some book off your shelf and tears the pages out. He hasn't done anything wrong. Or three-year-old probably old enough. He has said something wrong make a year and a half.

He hasn't done anything wrong. If I go into your house tear some pages out of your book. I've done something wrong. What's the difference? Well, I'm capable of appreciating reasons for respecting your property that my one-and-a-half-year-old.

This is hypothetical. One-and-a-half-year-old nephew doesn't. Doesn't have the capacity, right? There are differences between people that allow me and you to think about our behaviors to evaluate our behaviors to see whether or not.

There are legitimate reasons for behaving as we do. Creatures that don't have that capacity don't have that capacity. It's precisely because they lack that capacity that makes no sense that the notion of right and wrong behavior gets no purchase.

Okay, right. So the answer is nothing makes it wrong. Kagan's not talking about whether or not something is wrong in and of itself. He's already presupposing that it is instead. He's talking about identifying right and wrong so this doesn't really answer Craig's question because Craig was asking a question about moral ontology, you know Kagan is talking about Moral epistemology.

Human beings understand right and wrong. Great, but that's not the question that Craig was asking. It was about what makes something wrong in and of itself.

Lions can't reflect upon their behavior. So when they do it, it's not wrong. If you or I were to engage in that behavior, we can reflect upon that. We can recognize the reasons for not behaving that way.

So I think the distinction is a fairly straightforward one. Not not a deep mystery or a hard challenge for the naturalist to to respond to. Okay.

I think that's a good answer for why we wouldn't regard animals as moral agents who would be culpable for their acts. But it seems to me that at best that answer would go to show. That rationality or the ability to reflect rationally on things is a necessary condition for Moral behavior, but I don't see that that's a sufficient condition for moral behavior.

It's still not clear to me why it would be wrong for creatures who have considerably complex neurological systems. To inflict harm on each other on a naturalistic worldview in the struggle for survival.

Okay, so right. And so Craig is wondering whether Kagan is trying to suggest that Morality is simply evolved human creatures ascribing language to certain actions. Because if if that's all that's going on in morality then actions in and of themselves are not evil.

Virtuous they are amoral and then human beings simply use language to call a moral actions right and wrong. Probably because certain actions promote Flourishing or however Kagan said I think like doesn't hurt and provides help.

So the question you asked initially was how can I explain why it's wrong for me to murder when it's not wrong for lions? To murder.

Not exactly. The question was what makes inflicting harm really wrong given the naturalistic worldview that you espouse. Dr Kagan, that's the question of moral ontology not about having a capacity to identify morality to.

Answer that question. All it takes is for me to point out a relevant difference between us and you. Just I think said yeah. All right, so I managed to do that. If we now shift to the question So what does it take for wrongness to enter the world?

Above and beyond. Rationality. I think the answer might well be actually once we achieve a certain level of rationality Nothing more is taken nothing more is needed. What the reason? It's objectively wrong for me to engage in murder is precisely because there is a reason for me not to do it a reason that I'm capable of recognizing.

And if you ask What more does it take. The answer is well that those are the basic ingredients. Right there? We can we can refine it. I mean we can we can put a little icing on it if we'd like to make it but in terms of the essentials.

That's it. This is actually a good response from the atheistic worldview. But he's still not answering the question. So what he's saying is evolutionarily speaking human beings have reached a certain capacity of Rationality unlike any other creature in the animal kingdom or on the planet.

They've reached this capacity to reason at a level that entails What we describe as right and wrong actions and so morality is just a part of the function of our evolved brains. Like I said, that's probably the best response that an atheist could give.

The problem is it still doesn't answer the question. The question is about whether or not actions in and of themselves are right and wrong. And when I say right and wrong, I mean morally good and morally evil.

And so hopefully Craig challenges Kagan on this because he did not directly answer the question and for me to do depends on.

What kind of creature I am once I become. The kind of creature in the evolutionary, you know process. Once creatures evolved that are capable of stepping back from their actions. Capable of reflecting about whether or not their behavior makes sense.

Whether it conforms to standards that they are themselves prepared to endorse. At that point The machinery is in place and at that point there are reasons for me to behave in certain ways and to avoid other kinds Of behavior.

And if you ask but what makes that wrong, right?

Why these beings suddenly achieve moral intrinsic moral worth in virtue of Having these complex nervous systems that enables them to have self-reflection and so forth.

If you put it right because again if Kagan is right in his view then actions in and of themselves are not morally good or Evil. Human beings have just come along and ascribed moral language to actions that are actually amoral.

So rape Isn't in and of itself wrong until human beings come along and start using language to describe it as such. I mean, this is Kagan's view, you know, we we act as if it is wrong, but only because we use that language.

It's not because it really is and that's a tough pill to swallow for an atheist. But that's what you have to do. If you espouse this particular view.

Complex nervous systems. It sounds pretty deflationary, right? What's so special about having a complex nervous system? But of course that complex nervous system allows you to do calculus. It allows you to do astrophysics.

It allows you to write poetry. It allows you to fall in love. Put under that description you asked what's so special about humans from a naturalist perspective. I'm at a loss to know how to answer that question.

If you don't see why we'd be special and different from everything else in creation. That because we can do poetry we can write a novel we can think philosophical thoughts. We can do calculus and we can think about the morality of our behavior I don't know.

What kind of answer could possibly satisfy you at that point? Well, well, obviously.

The kind of answer that I offered but.

To follow up on that because I mean I could I don't want. I'm tempted to say I could play this game and that's unfair. Because of course, it's not a game, but I could pose the same kinds of questions to you.

Perhaps I will you know I could say look. All right. So God says, you know, you guys are really really special, right? What did that how does his saying it make us really special? But we see he gave us a soul.

How does our having a soul make us a special. Whatever answer you give you could always say with regard to that What's so special about that at a certain point? You're just going to have to say you know what?

These features really do seem to me to be special and so far as it seems to me that our ability to communicate To reflect to love to be creative and consequently to shape our behavior with an eye towards how we're interacting with one another these things strike me as.

Remarkable ways in which we're special. I think they strike all of us that way and that's the difficulty perhaps I think in.

In.

Showing what I'm attempting to show is that we all do I think intuitively value one another. We value persons. We value poetry creativity and all of these things. I think we all agree that these are goods.

The question is so on a naturalistic view.

Why?

Think that these things are goods. It seems to me that there you you you emphasize in your own book on the limits of morality the importance of having explanations and not cutting off the search for explanations too soon, right.

And I wonder if You're not cutting off the search for explanations too soon by simply saying well, I'm just going to regard Persons as intrinsically valuable, but without any kind of further grounding for that.

So this is interesting. Craig is not identifying Kagan's semantic maneuvering here. And so in other words He's not explicitly pressing Kagan on the fact that he's that Kagan is not answering the question about moral ontology.

And so by continuing to press him to continue to ask The question it appears that he just doesn't like Kagan's answer even though Kagan has now responded a couple of times in this area. I don't know if Craig is holding back on purpose or maybe Kagan's caught him off-guard.

That would be ironic. I would say Kagan even though he's not answering the question is providing a better framework. He's narrating the conversation better than Craig at this point, which gives him an out to kind of not answer the question.

So Craig really needs to press him on this point.

I gave you a sketch of the contract area and thought your attitude was I don't find that a very compelling story. It doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing that constitutes an adequate grounding. I suppose these things are in the eyes of the beholder and everybody here has got is entitled to decide from the selves.

What kind of answers will be satisfactory or not?

That's good appeal to the audience but hold on a second contract arianism or social contract theory is the view that human beings get together and They create a set of moral right and wrongs in order to live Within that system presumably, whatever the group decides is what's best for everyone, but that's not really answering Craig's question again.

Craig is asking about Kagan's Assumption of the intrinsic value of human beings in order to begin with the notion that we shouldn't hurt people. In order to start with that you have to assume that human beings have intrinsic value.

And so what Craig is asking is what's the grounding for that Kagan says contract arianism? But then that's kind of implying that human beings are the ground for the value of human beings. Okay, by the way, Craig is not doing a great job of pressing Kagan on the fact that he's not really answering his questions.

And if he doesn't press in to these responses Kagan might actually get the upper hand by providing his response along with his better Framework with a nice little appeal to the audience there. That was really clever.

So Kagan is out styling Craig at this point. Let me ask you a different question. I don't want more. Oh, okay.

Are you a determinist? Yes, and yet you still think that love is significant and human choices are yes.

I was significant even though they're determined so to give a piece. Oh.

So instead of pressing Kagan on his insufficient answers Craig has decided to take a new tack. Which means now he's setting aside the opportunity to challenge Kagan in his previous comments. In other words Craig really didn't challenge them in a way that he could have and I'd give Kagan a slight advantage at this Point because Craig is now moving on some jargon to the philosophy to the audience.

That that bill will be familiar with. I'm a compatibilist. That is to say I believe that one can combine determinism and.

Free will.

So absent free will humans would lack the significance that we clearly have. But I believe that's compatible with determinism. Actually, am I a determinist. Who knows what quantum mechanics teaches us about whether or not determinism is true?

But at least I believe that determinism could be true without in any way threatening my conviction that humans are special.

Did you have a follow-up on that one?

Well.

Only to say that it just seems to me to rob moral choices of any sort of significance if we if we're determined to do it by the antecedent physical causes that lead up to the point of choosing and then Then cause our brains to react one way rather than another.

It I can't see how That could have any more moral significance than a tree growing a branch at a certain point in its development.

Because you're a non-compatibilist.

This is definitely an avenue that you could travel down in terms of a conversation about morality. I wonder if this is the best approach that Craig could have taken given the previous responses by Kagan.

There was a lot to chew on there. There was a lot to deal with there and also given the topic. I mean the topic is not about moral significance. It's on whether or not God is necessary for morality. So he's out of time now if there was some kind of garden path that Craig was attempting to set for Kagan.

He's missed this opportunity. I would not have gone down this road at all at this point. I'd say Kagan has a slight advantage over Craig so far. So so one of the things that you said in your opening remarks.

What you quoted? Several people. I think there was a long quote from Michael Ruse saying something like If naturalism is true, if atheism is false, then ethics is illusory. Deeper meaning is illusory.

By the way, so notice Both Craig now and Kagan have referred to notes there. They're sort of bringing up what's taken place in the opening statements. Which by the way, you should definitely check out this fuller debate and I'll leave the link to that in the in the show notes.

But this is what's called flow and it's a key to Being a good debater. You need to develop your flow. So flow is basically just your note-taking. During the process of a debate judges and debaters should take notes and There's a like a whole shorthand way of doing this because you can't write down a word-for-word what somebody's saying especially when you get into what's called spreading which I don't know if you've seen like formal debates, but they basically try to Like, you know drop like 9 ,000 words in 60 seconds.

So flow is definitely key. It looks like they're referring to their flow and that means that these guys are well prepared and they know what they're doing. So that's really good.

But I think those phrases were there and I found that an interesting slide or so it seemed to me. The move from ethics is illusory to deeper meaning is illusory. I think I want to concede that in the way you mean deeper meaning I don't believe in deeper meaning because I think when you talk that way.

You think for there to not that I have any trouble talking about meaning or even deep meaning. But when you talk that way, I think you're asking you're thinking it's got to be meaning on a cosmic scale.

Cosmic Meaning, Moral Accountability, and the Heat Death of the Universe

This guy is an excellent narrator. He's laying a framework wherein anyone in that audience can follow him along. He's setting the table for himself very easily and very compellingly. He's got he's got great energy.

He's got a great grasp of the topic. The criteria by which I look at these particular debates include style. Okay, so in as much as strong arguments are definitely key style is important too and stylistically Kagan is a really great debater.

That's where some of the points about accountability come in as well. Yes so I find. I believe that Humans are just creatures that evolved on this tiny little speck of dust. But I don't see how the denial of deeper meaning should give me any reason to think.

Therefore I'm committed to ethics as illusory. So perhaps you could explain that.

Where.

That came in I think was with respect to moral accountability. And this yes and also with regard to the significance of human beings it seemed to me That on a naturalistic worldview everything Is ultimately destined to destruction in the heat death of the universe.

As the universe expands it grows colder and colder. As its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no life. No heat no light only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies expanding into endless darkness.

And in light of that end It's it's hard for me to understand how our moral choices have any sort of significance. There's no moral accountability. The universe is neither better nor worse for what we do.

That ultimately there isn't. Our moral lives become Vacuous. There's because they don't have that kind of cosmic significance.

I still need to have you explain that for me better because again. It seems to me. It's one thing to say it lacks eternal Cosmic everlasting significance, it's another thing to say it lacks significance in fact to give one of your examples you you talked about.

Can I remember the source of this. Yeah?

This is tough because when asked you should be able to justify a particular quote that you use in your opening statement. Or whatever. Right. Especially when you're quoting from an expert to sort of back up your contention.

Craig chose Michael Ruse. Probably because Ruse is an atheist himself and this kind of goes towards developing Craig's ethos because he's quoting from the other side. To support his his own contention, but he should be able to explain why Ruse said what he said and Craig Didn't give the best response here so far.

The torturers was a Nazi torturers.

Yeah, you say you know if theism isn't true, then it doesn't really matter. This strikes me as I'm sorry. It's I'm sure it's going to sound rude, but strikes me as an outrageous thing to suggest it doesn't really matter.

Surely it matters to the torture victims whether they're being tortured. It Doesn't require that this makes some Cosmic difference to the eternal significance of the universe. For to matter whether a human being is tortured it matters to them.

It matters to their family it matters to us. So again. How do you move from the lack of eternal significance to the thought that if it doesn't have eternal significance?

It can't have any significant cause that the victim it obviously matters to him in the sense that he's in pain and in agony. But ultimately it doesn't matter that he was ever in pain and in agony the whole thing just degenerates into Utter meaninglessness and insignificance, I don't mean to suggest that the torture didn't do a bad thing to this person.

But ultimately it doesn't matter. It all ends up the same.

But it all ending up the same isn't the same thing as and so it doesn't matter what happens until we get there. And I say and it matters what the path is before we get to the end point. I don't merely mean Subjectively.

It matters it appears to matter. It matters to them, but it doesn't really matter.

That's what it seems to just matter subjectively, but again. I just want to say right.

I don't understand how we get from if it doesn't Objectively matter to the universe or doesn't objectively matter on a cosmic scale. How do we get from that to so it doesn't objectively matter at all?

That's a legitimate question, and it's very cleverly worded. The Rhetorical force behind the the question is on is actually on Kagan's side here. You know. But it presupposes that objectivity is what Kagan has defined it as.

Kagan seems to define objectivity as well. If we all get together. And agree to call something moral or immoral then it's objective, but that's not objectivity. That's subjective agreement about language.

If I'm holding monopoly money in my hand, and I call it a million dollars. That doesn't make it a million dollars. You know even if I get a group of people together I don't care how large the group is and we all agree to call What's in my hand a million dollars that doesn't make it a million dollars.

There has to be an objective standard? Outside of an agreement between people that identifies its value because you can hypothetically get a different group of people together. And they could all agree that what's in my hand is actually 50 cents the second group of people is doing the same thing.

That my first group is doing but that obviously doesn't change the value of what's in my hand because if we follow Kagan's definition. It's not about the actual thing itself. It's about the language of the thing and that's not objective morality.

It's getting a group of individual subjective opinions and coming to an agreement what I said was with regard to the third point.

Even if objective moral values and duties exist they become irrelevant because They're inconsequential. So my third point about moral accountability was simply to say on atheism even if there are objective right and wrong And good and evil There's no moral accountability and so One might as well just live as he pleases and.

Might as well if I might as well means there's no reason to live one way versus the other. Unless it makes a difference on the cosmic scale. It just seems to me that the same questions being to my ears begged yet.

Again, it matters perfectly. There is an objective Categorical reason not a matter of opinion. There's a fact of the matter about the compelling Overriding reason that you are irrational to disregard.

Even though in terms of the heat death of the universe, it won't stop it. But for all that there's an objective reason not to behave this way.

That would be to say you have an objective moral duty and I for the third point I was willing to grant that but the question Here is the deeper question about why adopt the moral point of view and that can't be a moral answer because you're asking the question Why adopt the moral point of view?

I think the concern that I have in this third point is that on is the answer that you believe you get. Let me explain. I think on the third point that what I'm trying to say there is that on atheism or naturalism.

The prudential value and moral value are on a collision course with each other that what it's prudent for me to do is often in contrast or in conflict with what's moral for me to do and Prudence would seem to trump Morality in terms of one's Self-interest in virtue of the fact that it makes no difference how you choose.

But on theism where there is moral accountability you can consistently make choices that go against your self-interest and Sacrifice self-interest and prudence and in the for the sake of the moral value and moral duty.

So at this point, it looks like Craig has finally hit his stride.

Okay.

The coffee started to kick in and he brings up a really great point. Kagan has set up a system to explain morality. Contractarianism, but he begins with a presupposition that itself is a smuggled in morality.

Don't hurt people. Okay, that's what he ultimately begins with in other words. He can't start with his moral system. He first has to smuggle in a moral axiom in order to then establish his own moral system.

And that's a huge problem for him for the Christian theist. Obviously we begin with a necessary being and then we work our way from that to moral duties and values, but from the atheist perspective where they don't answer to a transcendent moral necessary being.

What is the explanation for why everybody is obligated to follow a system of rules?

You'll get it back in the end. And so it's not really in the long term of self-sacrifice at all. That's the thought.

Yes, well that that wasn't what I would that wouldn't be the way I'd put it.

It's not that but that is the reason that you think you can resolve the conflict between prudence and self-interest and morality. Because God makes it be the case that unless you act more at least that your self-interest won't actually be furthered.

That's.

Right it that they'll they'll be in harmony with each other ultimately. So you. So you're completely right.

I don't believe they're in harmony. Yeah, but that doesn't mean I believe the only rational thing to do is to act prudently. On the contrary I believe there's greater reason this is. I'm sorry. This should be a form of a quest like jeopardy put this in a form of question.

Shall we? Yeah. Why not believe?

That.

Moral reasons outweigh prudential reasons. The mere fact that there's a conflict doesn't doesn't commit the net.

Yeah, but see this is a question that Kagan needs to answer. Craig doesn't correct Craig's answer. He already gave. You know, there is a divine being that is transcendent. And so therefore Morality applies to everyone because we answer to the divine being at the end of the day.

Kagan has no divine being that he answers to in his worldview. So he's the one that needs to provide an answer to this question.

To the claim that the prudential ones are the weightier ones.

All right but there is there is that conflict and for many people I think as I said this can have a demoralizing effect upon a person because ultimately his moral choices make no difference either for himself or for the the good of the universe and I Suspect that this will be demoralizing in the way that Adams suggested it would.

No doubt for some people it will be. But of course for some people. There's a different kind of demoralizing that takes place with the belief in theism, isn't there? I mean if we're just going to talk about what are some possible psychological effects.

Some people will act morally not out of the recognition of the objective values. But merely in hopes of getting into heaven and avoiding hell, there's something morally off about that as well.

And so so so both sides.

Face certain empirical questions about. You know, certain people may misread the implications of the view. That strikes me as a as a standoff at best.

This is a good point that Kagan is bringing up and he got Craig to agree with him. He kind of turned the tables on Craig is is what happened. That's a really good move on on his part. Again, stylistically Kagan is just doing a better job than Craig.

Craig shouldn't have responded that way. He should have pressed the point again that to say that morality outweighs prudence. You should first ground your morality in something objective. But Craig didn't do that.

And so he's allowing Kagan the opportunity to not have to answer that question and then to press him. And sort of turn the tables on him boy. That is definitely a missed opportunity. Wow, this is a great debate and and one of the best that I've ever seen.

Coming from a challenger to the Christian worldview Kagan really did a fantastic job. As I said in the outset, he was laying a better framework than Craig most of the time. He was a better narrator of the debate most of the time and he did some he made some stylistic choices that actually were Rhetorically powerful and he appealed to the audience and Craig didn't do those things.

Craig also missed several opportunities to press Kagan on the fact that he wasn't answering Craig's question directly. So for those reasons, I really do think that Shelly Kagan actually Won the debate over dr. William Lane Craig, but look maybe you took a look at the fuller debate and you notice different things.

Let me know what you think and actually who you think won in the comments below. I'd love to get your thoughts on this friends. Stay tuned. We got a brand new Playlist coming at you very soon. It's all about Q &A answering questions.

Either I answer a question or friends of mine that you're very familiar with. Answer questions related to theology apologetics and engaging the culture for Christ. I will take a break from debate teacher reacts for a couple of weeks because I'm gonna be out of town.

But I will return very soon with more in the meantime. I'll take a break and say bye for now.