Some Thoughts on the Lawrence Krauss vs. William Lane Craig Debate

On March 30, 2011, the noted scholars, Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig, debated the question, “Is There Evidence for God?” Craig provided five arguments using evidence from philosophy, cosmology, moral experience, and history to build his case that there is good evidence for the existence of God. Krauss, on the other hand, put together a largely incoherent tangle of odd statements about the nature of science, the illogic of logic, and other similar musings on quantum physics. For a blow by blow account, you may look at Wintery Knight’s snarky but accurate review as well as J.W. Wartick’s review of the whole affair. Krauss must have been embarrassed by his performance and has weighed in on a blog post trying to save face. PZ Myers also offers a well-thought out (sarcasm) critique of the whole affair. The main thoughts going through my head concerning the debate and its aftermath are these: 1. Why did Krauss not take this seriously enough to put in the preparation time to competently debate Craig who is a well-known Christian philosopher, theologian, and evangelical apologist? The topic of the debate is not strictly a scientific one. It is one specifically concerning philosophical and theological reflection. As such, Krauss was out of his element as his attempted rebuttals to Craig show. As my wife likes to say concerning the politically liberal commentator, Alan Colmes, I say concerning Krauss: He just doesn’t get it. I am utterly astounded that Krauss only prepared to debate Craig by watching a single youtube video of Craig debating Christopher Hitchens. Krauss must have thought that intelligent Christian theists such as Craig would just bow down in defeat from the utterances from the great physicist himself. Whatever the case Krauss showed very poor preparation to debate Craig even within his own specialty of theoretical physics. His exposition of “nothing” would be comical if it weren’t so sad. Even an atheist cosmologist like Luke Barnes has no patience for Krauss’ nonsense about “nothing”. 2. Why does Krauss think it is necessary to continually attack Craig personally? You can see Krauss’ viciousness in his post to save face. Interpreting Craig’s use of an equation concerning Bayes’ Theorem as only a stunt to demonstrate Craig’s mathematical and scientific prowess, is ludicrous! Craig never claims that he is a scientist or a mathematician. He is a philosopher. Craig was explaining how epistemic probability of the evidence of a hypothesis followed the Bayesian equation. Throughout the debate, Krauss felt it necessary to continually remind the audience that he actually knew quantum physics unlike Craig and had to waste time explaining the mysteries of quantum physics. Great. So, what? The topic of the debate concerns evidence for God and not what the proper physics of quantum phenomena are. If Krauss felt so strongly that he needed to remind everyone of the fact of his mathematical and physical acumen, then why didn’t he adequately rebut Craig’s argument that God’s existence is more probable given the origin of the universe? The most outrageous claim by Krauss in his blog post was that Craig was involved in giving outright lies! Well, what are those lies? Krauss doesn’t provide any.