Debate Teacher Reacts: William Lane Craig vs. Christopher Hitchens

Have you ever watched an apologetics debate, and by the end of it you're thinking to yourself, yeah, but who really won? Have you ever seen two debaters go at it head to head, and they were so worthy of each other, they actually handled themselves so well, that by the end of it you don't know who beat the other?

Or even what the criteria is to determine any of this? My name's Nate Sala, I'm the president of a

Christian apologetics ministry called A Clear Lens, and before I jumped into ministry, I actually taught debate.

So if you're looking for the inside baseball on the most watched apologetics debates, then join me in this video.

In this particular video, we're going to be looking at a debate between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens.

I remember this one because it was, I think it was back in 2009 at Biola University.

It was a packed crowd, packed audience, and Christopher Hitchens was one of the four horsemen of the new atheism, and then of course

William Lane Craig, one of the most well known leading Christian apologists of his time.

And they debated the question of whether God exists, William Lane Craig of course taking the position that God does exist, and Christopher Hitchens taking the opposite position.

Because this is a two and a half hour debate, I want to zoom in specifically on cross -examination, because that's where I always taught my students the rubber meets the road, that's where you go mono -e -mono, and that's where you can get some great moments where in cross -examination you can either shine or you can stink really badly.

And so that's what I'm going to zoom in on is cross -exam between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens. So let's go ahead and jump into the video.

And so without further ado, allow me to welcome up Vanity Fair columnist, prolific author, my friend and champion of freedom,

Christopher Hitchens. By the way, I actually met

Christopher Hitchens once. This was back in 2006. I was actually dealing blackjack at Bally's on the floor on the strip.

And so Christopher Hitchens had come to Bally's to debate Dinesh D'Souza, and I just remember seeing

Christopher Hitchens walk up to my table and asked me where the bathroom was, and I immediately recognized who he was.

I was a big fan, and the only thing I could muster was just tell him exactly where the bathrooms were.

I'm like, over there to the right, and then he thanked me and and he wandered off, and I never had a chance to say,

I'm such a fan of your writing. Anyway, Christopher Hitchens looking and from this looking unkempt from this extraordinary lighthouse institution.

Wait a sec. Wait, wait, wait. Did you notice that? What is that? Can you pause that? What, what is good?

Am I, am I seeing that right? He brought a banana to a debate with Chris, like with William Lane Craig.

Is that because he thinks the whole conversation is bananas? Does he, is there some kind of statement about religion being bananas?

You have to be bananas to be a, like, I don't know. Am I going too, like, far deep into the woods here? Maybe he just needs the potassium.

Why did he bring a banana to a debate? From this extraordinary lighthouse institution, another prolific author and apologist, a scholar extraordinaire who, like Mr.

Hitchens, has his Ph .D. from a wonderful English university, Professor William Lane Craig. Please, professor.

Ah, very good. Little collegiate, you know, little collegial handshake there. That's pretty nice.

It's a very structured debate according to classical lines until the questions at the end. We begin with an opening argument, 20 minutes to Professor Craig.

Professor? Right. Okay. So here's the deal. When it comes to apologetics debates, they, they run really closely to, on the, on the public high school circuit, something called maybe like policy debate.

They also run up really closely to something called public forum debate. Public forum debate is where you have a two -person team that runs up against another two -person team.

Now they're given a particular topic, what are called resolutions, and they have to, you know, argue for the resolution or, you know, affirm the resolution, or they have to run up and take the negative position or argue the neg on the resolution.

And so they'll come up and give opening statements, what are called a constructive and then, or like a first constructive.

And then after that, there's what's called crossfire. Now this isn't very far off from apologetics debates that we watch a lot, which is basically that you have an opening, an opening salvo by an apologist, and then you have, you know, somebody else come up and then they have cross -examination.

But now let's go to my favorite part, and that is where the rubber meets the road, and it's cross -examination.

Let's go to it. We now enter the period of cross -examination, which trial -like allows the questioner to pose and the answer only to answer and not to repeat the question or to dodge.

Six minutes of questions begin to Dr. Craig, followed by six minutes of questions to Mr. Hitchens.

Dr. Craig, your questions for Mr. Hitchens. Let's do it. All right, let's talk first about whether there are any good arguments to think that atheism is true.

Now it seems to me that you're rather ambivalent here, that you say, you redefine atheism to mean a sort of a -theism or non -theism.

That's what it means. But how do you distinguish, then, the different varieties of non -theism?

For example, what is normally called atheism, agnosticism, or the view of verificationists that the statement

God exists is simply meaningless. Okay, so that might not exactly be the clearest way to word that.

What Dr. Craig is trying to get at here is, what is meaningful about the word atheism if you're trying to redefine atheism to simply mean a lack of belief?

Whereas before, an atheist is somebody who holds to the proposition that God does not exist.

Now, Christopher Hitchens has changed that meaning, and so what Dr. Craig is asking is, how is that meaning differentiating between, say, an agnostic, for example?

Well, there are different schools of atheism, as you say, but there's no claim I know how to make that says atheism is true, because atheism is the statement that a certain proposition isn't true.

So I wish you'd get this bit right, because it's there you go again. I just devoted a little time to this.

I said, it is not in itself a belief or a system. It simply says, you can get by better, probably, we think, without the assumption that no one who wants you to worship a god has ever been able to come up with a good enough reason to make you do it.

Well, so now, this is what has always struck me as contradictory with people who are taken with the lack of belief thing.

Let's go back and play this, because it's very clear what he does. Atheism is the statement that a certain proposition isn't true. Okay, atheism is the statement that a certain proposition is not true.

Well, but do you believe that a certain proposition is not true? Because what you just said a second ago is, it's not a belief.

So if you're going to say that a proposition is not true, you don't believe what you're saying? This is really inconsistent here.

So I wish you'd get this bit right, because it's there you go again. I just devoted a little time to this.

I said, it is not in itself a belief or a system. It simply says, you can get by better, probably, we think.

So, I mean, Dr. Craig has the better argument here, because Hitchens has contradicted himself, and I think any judge is going to be able to take that into consideration.

Now, maybe Hitchens has misspoke, but, I mean, he's not doing himself a great help in cross -examination at the moment, and, you know, anybody would see that.

Without the assumption that no one who wants you to worship a god has ever been able to come up with a good enough reason to make you do it.

Now, so the point is, though, that on your definition of atheism or non -theism, it really embodies a diversity of views, such as agnosticism, what is normally called atheism, or this verificationism.

Now, which of those do you hold to within this umbrella of atheism? Are you an atheist who asserts the proposition

God does not exist, or do you simply withhold belief in God in the way the agnostic does?

Right. I'm a, in some, on some days, I'm a greater, no,

I'm not gonna, no, I'm not gonna do you that much of a favor. Well, so, and here's what Dr. Craig is doing. He's setting what's called a garden path in forensics, and so the garden path is basically that there are certain, what are seemingly innocuous questions that are posed to the other side, but it's, it's actually meant to kind of intellectually speaking pin your debater, the interlocutor that you're going up against, up against the wall.

And really what Dr. Craig is doing is he's trying to figure out what Mr. Hitchens' position is. If he can figure out what

Mr. Hitchens' position is, then Mr. Hitchens should be able to support that position with good reasoning, which he did not do in his opening statement, and that's where Dr.

Craig wants him to go. On some, on some days, I'm a great admirer of Thomas Huxley, who had the great, who had the great debate with Bishop Wilberforce in Oxford at the

Natural History Museum about Darwinism in the mid -19th century, who was known as Darwin's bulldog.

We would now say Darwin's pit bull, and who completely trounced the good bishop. But I can't thank him for inventing the term agnostic, and I can't thank him for some of his social

Darwinist positions, some of which are rather unattractive. I need an answer to this, my time is fleeting. Because I think agnosticism is evasive.

To me, yes, if you talk about the power of the Holy Spirit and so forth, to me, that is meaningless. It's, to me,

I'm sorry, I've tried. It's white noise. It's like saying there is only one God and Allah is his messenger.

It's gibberish to me. There are many of us, I'm sorry, there are just many of us to whom, of whom this is the case.

It may be true, it is true. Okay, Mr. Hitchens, I got to press you here. Yeah, it's not that Dr.

Craig is being rude here. It's just that in cross -examination, you only have a certain, you're battling the clock, really, is what you're doing.

Time is against you. And if your interlocutor knows that, he can try to filibuster, which is what it looks like Mr.

Hitchens is doing, whether he realizes it or not. But Dr. Craig has a set of questions, and I'm sure he was jotting down as Mr.

Hitchens was giving his opening salvo there, and so he wants to get to all of them, if time allows, and that's why he's pressing

Hitchens here. What is your view exactly? Do you affirm God does not exist, or are you simply withhold believing?

I think once I have said that I've never seen any persuasive evidence for the existence of something, and I've made real attempts to study the evidence presented and the arguments presented, that I will go as far as to say, have the nerve to say, that it does not therefore exist, except in the minds of its, except in the

Henry Jamesian subjective sense that you say, of it being so real to some people in their own minds, that it accounts as a force in the world, yes.

Okay, Hitchens lost. Hitchens lost that point, because in the beginning, he tried to make the atheism is a lack of belief.

Dr. Craig just asked him, do you have a actual proposition that you hold to, that you believe?

He just said, yes, he does, and so Hitchens has lost that point, and I think it's pretty clear.

You do affirm, then, that God does not exist. Now, what I want to know, and do you have any justification for that?

I think I've come unwind on some horrible... No, you're still, you're fine. Are you sure? Do you have any arguments leading to the conclusion that God does not exist?

Let's hear it. Well, I would rather, I think, I'm wondering if I'm boring anybody now. I would rather say,

I'd rather state it in reverse, and say, I find all the arguments in favor to be fallacious or unconvincing.

And I'd have to add, that this isn't my reason for not believing in it, that I would be very depressed if it was true.

But that's quite... No, see, when you hold to a proposition, which clearly Hitchens now has said, even though in the beginning he didn't say that, or he said the opposite, now he's saying that he does have a proposition that he holds to, he needs to back it up, and he is not doing it.

What he's saying is, well, your arguments actually don't hold. Okay, let's concede for argument's sake that none of the

Christians' arguments actually hold water. That doesn't mean that it's false, and you still need to back up your position as somebody who takes the opposite stance on the topic, does

God exist? Hitchens clearly... See, even my dog is upset with this. Hitchens is clearly not able to support that, and so he loses this point altogether.

Quite a different thing. I don't say of atheism that it's at all morally superior.

That would be very risky. I wouldn't admit that it was at all morally inferior either, but we can at least be acquitted on the charge of wishful thinking.

I wonder if that's the case. Would you agree that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?

Well, you know, I'm not sure that I would agree. Okay, let's turn to the moral argument and talk about that a little bit.

I think you've misunderstood the moral argument. I mean, given the stakes, doctor, sorry, given the stakes,

I mean, you're not saying, we're not talking about unicorns, or tooth fairies, or leprechauns here. We're talking about an authority that would give other human beings the right to tell me what to do in the name of God.

So for a claim like that, if there's no evidence for it, it seems to me not a small question.

No, it's certainly not a small question. Because you're making a very, very, very large claim. Your evidence had better be absolutely magnificent, it seems to me.

Okay, there's that extraordinary evidences thing that he made in his opening salvo. But again, here's the problem.

The burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. He conceded that he himself is actually holding to a certain claim, a certain proposition.

And so he's completely avoiding the burden of proof that rests on his own shoulders here. And it's the lack of magnificence,

I think, that began to strike me first. One final question. Okay, well, let's go to the moral argument.

It seems to me there that you've misunderstood the argument, in that we're looking for an objective foundation for the moral values and duties that we both,

I think, want to affirm. It's not a matter of whether or not we can know what is right and wrong, or that we need

God to tell us what is right and wrong. It's rather that we need to have some sort of an objective foundation for right and wrong.

Wouldn't you agree on your view, it's simply the sociobiological spinoffs of the evolutionary process, and that therefore these do not provide any sort of objective foundation for moral values and duties?

That could be true, yes. That could well be true. Yeah, I don't want to be too much of a reductionist, but it's entirely possible that it is purely evolutionary and functional.

One wants to think that there's a bit more to one's love for the fellow creature than that. But it doesn't add one iota of weight or moral gravity to the argument to say, but that's because I don't believe in a supernatural being.

It's a non -sequitur. Yeah, once again, when your interlocutor throws a question out to you, you can't really concede, even for argument's sake here.

So I think Hitchens at this point is being magnanimous, and probably at the coffee table, this would be a wonderful type of discussion, which

I think Hitchens is actually more of that kind of creature. Sit him down at a coffee table, let's have a great discussion, and it will be very enriching, even though maybe you walk away disagreeing with Hitchens.

It's just going to be a rich, robust experience. But when it comes to Crossfire, to concede this particular argument, once again, you give yourself to the person that's asking you the questions in Crossfire.

This did not go well at all for Hitchens. Dr. Craig won this round handily.

Your question is for Dr. Craig. Well, I'd like to know first, you said that the career of Jesus of Nazareth involved a ministry of miracles and exorcisms.

When you say exorcism, do you mean that you believe in devils too? What I meant there was that most historians agree that Jesus of Nazareth practiced miracle working and he practiced exorcisms.

I'm not committing myself, nor are historians committing themselves to the reality of demons, but they are saying that Jesus did practice exorcism and practiced healing.

So you believe that Jesus of Nazareth caused devils to leave the body of a madman and go into a flock of pigs that hurled themselves down the

Gadarene Slopes into the sea? Okay, see, that's that thing again that he did in his opening salvo,

Hitchens, which is basically to talk about and characterize the Christian view from the atheistic perspective, but do it with this kind of looking -down -the -nose incredulity.

I mean, you can even see the look on Hitchens' face here, which to me is extremely interesting.

Like, why would Hitchens start at this spot in the debate? Why not go to the other arguments that Dr.

Craig laid out, which were sort of the philosophical arguments for the existence of God? Why go directly to something like this?

I'm kind of scratching my head at this point. Well, I believe that that's historical, yes. Right.

That would be sorcery, wouldn't it, though? No, it would be an illustration of Jesus' ability to command even the forces of darkness, and therefore an illustration of the sort of divine authority that he was able to command and exercise.

This, as I say, is illustrative of this unprecedented sense of divine authority that Jesus of Nazareth had, that he even could command the forces of darkness and that they would obey.

So whether you think he was a genuine exorcist or that he merely believed himself to be an exorcist, what is historically undeniable is that he had this radical sense of divine authority, which he expressed by miracle -working and exorcisms.

Right. And do you believe he was born of a virgin? Okay. Again, giving

Hitchens the benefit of the doubt, he might be laying what I mentioned earlier is what's called a garden path, which is there are some series of seemingly innocuous questions that he's laying down in order to get to a zinger that's going to pin the interlocutor,

Dr. Craig, up against the wall. But to do that, you do waste a little bit of time here and Hitchens has lost a good chunk of time.

He only has a few minutes. I wonder where this is all going. Yes, I believe that as a

Christian. I couldn't claim to prove that historically. That's not part of my case tonight. But as a

Christian, I believe that. And I know you believe in the resurrection, but as a matter of biblical, what should we call it, consistency, it's said in one of the gospels that at the time of the crucifixion, all the graves of Jerusalem were opened and all the tenants of the graves walked the streets and greeted their old friends.

It makes the resurrection sound rather commonplace in the greater Jerusalem area. That's in the gospel of Matthew and that's actually attached to a crucifixion narrative.

It says at the time of the crucifixion. Yes, that's right. At the time of the crucifixion, it says that there were appearances of Old Testament saints in Jerusalem at the time.

This is part of Matthew's description of the crucifixion scene. I mean, do you believe that?

I don't know. This is a little frustrating. Here's the thing. Hitchens needs to address more than just one thing.

Dr. Craig's opening argument was, number one, for the atheists, there's no good argument for atheism, so they need to provide a positive argument on that side.

Number two, there is the cosmological argument, the teleological argument. He laid these out.

There is the moral argument, the minimal facts of the resurrection, and then the feature that belief in God is properly basic.

All of these things Dr. Craig laid out, and Hitchens has only zoomed in on one ancillary aspect of,

I guess, the minimal facts of the resurrection, and he's staying there the entire time. He's losing quite a bit of an opportunity here to hit a number of other areas that Dr.

Craig laid out. Whether Matthew intends this to be apocalyptic imagery or whether he means this to be taken literally,

I've not studied it in any depth and I'm open -minded about it. I'm willing to be convinced one way or the other.

You'll see the reason I'm pressing you is this because, I mean, we know from Scripture that the pharaohs, the magicians, could produce miracles.

In the end, Aaron could outproduce them, but what I'm suggesting to you is even if the laws of nature can be suspended and great miracles can be performed, it doesn't prove the truth of the doctrine of the person who's performing them.

Would you not agree to that? Not necessarily, I think that's right. So somebody could be casting out devils from pigs and that wouldn't prove he was the son of God?

I think that's right. In fact, there were Jewish exorcists. The only point that I was trying to make there was that this was illustrative of the kind of divine authority that Jesus claimed, especially since he didn't cast them out in God's name.

He didn't perform miracles by praying to God. He would do them in his own authority. You got to remember, guys, the topic is does

God exist? Not that is Jesus the son of God. That's not the topic.

The fact that Dr. Craig brought this up in the opener is sort of a secondary effect of the minimal facts of the resurrection.

If Hitchens can significantly undercut the idea that Jesus was not the son of God, but somehow these things that Christians claim about Jesus are false, he has made maybe a little dent in Dr.

Craig's argumentation, but since he's spending his entire time in cross -examination on this one area, he's losing his ability to handle any of the other strong arguments for the existence of God.

So that Jesus exercised an authority that was simply unheard of at that time, and for which he was eventually crucified because it was thought to be blasphemous.

Well, it was thought to be blasphemous to claim to be the Messiah, to be exact. I mean, the people who got the closest look at him, the

Jewish Sanhedrin, thought that his claims were not genuine. So remember, if you're resting anything on eyewitnesses, the ones who we definitely know were there, thought he was bogus.

But okay, I think I've got a rough idea. Assuming you make that assumption of his pre -existing divinity, that it's a pre -substitutionalist case,

I can see what you're driving at. I've got another question for you, which is this. How many religions in the world do you believe to be false?

I don't know how many religions in the world there are. Well, fair enough.

I'll see if I can't narrow that down. That was a clumsily asked question, I admit.

Do you regard any of the world's religions to be false? Okay. At this point, a judge is going to be looking at their flow, right?

They're looking at the notes when they've been jotting down what the debaters have been talking about, and they're going to go, where is this in Dr.

Craig's opener? Like, what? What? So, I mean, again, this is certainly an attack that Christopher Hitchens can take, but he should have been dealing directly with the argumentation that Dr.

Craig laid out, and he just is not doing it. Do you regard any of the world's religions to be false preaching? Yes.

Yes, I think. Yeah, certainly. Would you name one, then? Islam. That's quite a lot.

Pardon me? That's quite a lot. Yes. Do you think it's moral to preach false religion?

No. So, religion is responsible for quite a lot of wickedness in the world right there. Certainly. Right. I'd be happy to concede that.

I would agree with that. So, if I was a baby being born in Saudi Arabia today, would you rather I was me or a

Wahhabi Muslim? Would you rather it was me, it was an atheist baby, or a

Wahhabi baby? I don't have any preferences as to whether you would.

As bad as that. Okay. Are there any,

I'm sorry, I've only got a few seconds. It's a serious question. I shouldn't squander it.

Are there any Christian denominations you regard as false? Certainly. Could I know what they are? Well, I'm not a

Calvinist, for example. I think that certain tenets of Reformed theology are incorrect.

I would be more in the Wesleyan camp myself. But these are differences among brethren.

These are not differences on which we need to put one another in some sort of a cage.

So, within the Christian camp, there's a large diversity of perspectives. I'm sure there are views that I hold that are probably false.

But I'm trying my best to get my theology straight, trying to do the best job. But I think all of us would recognize that none of us agree on every point of Christian doctrine, on every dot and tittle.

Before Mr. Hitchens succeeds in launching another series of religious wars among Christians, let's get to the...

Okay, so time's up. Again, wow. Even that last chunk dedicated to those sets of questions that Hitchens laid out for Dr.

Craig, that wasn't even the topic. Again, the topic is, does God exist? And now, I think it seems like Hitchens has zoomed out and has shifted the topic to, is religion harmful to the world or something?

I don't know. Which is something that he actually spent a lot of time on and maybe wrote a book on as well.

But this was just really clumsy. I'm sure for people sitting around a coffee table,

Hitchens is very powerfully rhetorically persuasive. But in terms of a debate,

I would give Hitchens no points for any of this stuff in cross -examination. All of it goes to Dr.

Craig. Perhaps Hitchens just kind of accidentally wandered into something that he just wasn't really prepared for, structurally speaking or even academically speaking.

I mean, this is why Dr. Craig can get back up on the podium in his closer and go back to his original points that he made and point out, hey,

Hitchens did not actually deal at all with my first line of argumentation. He was supposed to provide a positive argument for atheism.

He could not do that. He then, you know, didn't even deal with my cosmological argument or my teleological argument, in which case that means that he actually conceded the arguments.

Amazing. That's devastating for Hitchens in that area. At the end of the day, Hitchens is not directly dealing with anything, with most anything that Dr.

Craig laid out. This just is a very, a very poor debate performance by Hitchens.

And ultimately, Dr. Craig is the winner of this debate. Yeah, this debate was actually a really interesting back and forth.

I think Christopher Hitchens was really relying a lot on the power of his use of rhetoric, which he really was a master in that regard.

But of course, at the end of the day, William Lane Craig wins out on the content and the quality of the argumentation.

He never really strayed from the actual topic of the debate, does God exist? And in that sense, based on that criteria,

William Lane Craig wins this debate handily, hands down. What do you think about the debate?

Was it good, bad? Who do you think won? Go ahead and share those in the comments below. Also, if you would like to see me react to a particular apologetics video, feel free to send me those as well in the comments.

I can't wait to take a look at what you guys have to offer. Also, if you think that videos like these could benefit you, don't forget to check out our website, clearlens .org,

where we have formulated a particular way to communicate your Christian faith based on the good sound principles of debate.