"Does God Exist?" William Lane Craig vs Stephen Law. Westminster Central Hall, London, October 2011

This was the first event of The UK Reasonable Faith Tour and took place at Westminster Central Hall, London on 17 Oct 2011 in front of an audience of 1,700.
William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He affirms the existence of God.
Stephen Law is Provost of the Centre for Enquiry UK and lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, London. He denies the existence of God.
The debate was hosted by Justin Brierley, presenter of the faith debate show "Unbelievable?" on Premier Christian Radio www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable
The Reasonable Faith Tour was sponsored by UCCF, Damaris Trust and Premier Christian Radio. More resources: www.bethinking.org/reasonablefaithtour
This video was produced with the help of the Christian Evidence Society.

[@ClusiveC]

No matter who you fall in line with more, you simply can't deny that Craig dominated this debate.

[@mmmmSmegma]

I absolutely love how the moderator does a good job of maintaining a neutral disposition.

[@chrischristiansen7384]

I liked how pleasant Dr. Law was throughout it. Not all of Craig's opponents are that way.

[@jeffwoodcock6702]

"Even though sentient animals are in pain, they are not aware of it" Rite.

[@Darthadriel77]

No, Craig said: "The cosmologic Argument doesn't give any moral description of God"

[@CosmoShidan]

This was better than Hitchens or Harris!

[@riaandoyle8196]

For Him and through Him we were created .

[@nelsin-nagantkimber-g4760]

I am a Christian, but honestly, I think Steven Law won this debate. Applause to them both.

[@seanarmstrong1156]

Nice to see WLC videos finally having comments section opened

[@generichuman_]

The biggest problem I have with philosophy is that there are no sanity checking measures in place. If you are a scientist, experiments can fail. If you're a programmer, programs can contain bugs and crash, but with philosophy, you're allowed to postulate without bound, and build upon concepts that were never vetted against the base reality we all collectively share. This lack of sanity checking is evidenced by Craig's comfortability with a disembodied, all powerful, intelligent mind with free will as an impenetrable brute fact of nature. To anyone playing by the rules (even badly) of grounding their reality on conservative axioms, this is about as unparsimonious an axiom as you could imagine. On par with supposing a supercomputer that can do anything as your starting point. Of course God works as an axiom, because God is defined to be an explanation for anything you would ever need to explain. The question is, is it reasonable to do so? For context, would it be reasonable for a scientist searching for dark matter to propose a mysterious entity that produces dark matter as a starting point? Would a programmer who was tasked with writing a program to do "X" be justified in simply writing out the line "Do X" in the text editor? The answer here is an obvious no, because we all know that in the first case, we have no evidence and no good reason to believe the dark matter entity exists, and in the second, we know the line of code wouldn't run. We come face to face with reality in these cases, and we scoff at childish examples like the ones I gave, yet when it comes to philosophy, no one seems to care when the same (more or less) childish tactics are displayed. Craig lacks the sanity checking of science and the rigor of math, and is left only with the flexibility of the English language which can produce any fantasies his mind can muster. He is welcome to it, but there's no reason for the rest of us to take any of it seriously.

[@nickydaviesnsdpharms3084]

what he craig said about animals not being aware of pain if i understand correctly what about say a dog if you drop it in a vat of boiling water it writhes in agony, so is this just the nervous system?

[@godsscumm539]

What exactly were your opinions on the debate?

[@Stalicone]

Animals like dogs, horses, cats and that water buffalo absolutely and without question feel and are aware of every bit - every tiny bit of the pain they suffer. What they lack is the ability to cognate the implications of what that pain MEANS - that they are dying. THAT is what they dont understand and that alone is the difference.

[@levi5073]

You can believe that Craig is the greatest apologist in the world, and that he may be. However, it's 2020, and we still haven't seen a good response to the evidential problem of suffering.

[@gmccord1970]

Also, please tell me which website you were referring to. If you mean the reasonablefaith dot org website, I have found nothing where he admits that there is no way to tell that God is good or evil.

[@bazilmonk]

And since he defines the nature of reality and arbitrarily assigns value with no constraints, wouldn't it be easier to just forgive all now and forever in order to display the boundless magnitude of his love?

[@akosikuyzak]

Stephen Law is undoubtedly a great popularizer of philosophy, but it's clear that Craig crushed him in this debate.

[@PEProzent]

So you believe that something which has a beginning (our universe) can just begin to exist without a cause? I find it unbelievable.

[@punchbowlhaircut]

I wonder how long they would sit across from each other arguing if there wasn't a time limit.

[@cogen651]

Another one bites the dust under the logic of Craig.