[Update added below. Further update: here’s the video.]
I’m participating this afternoon in an intriguing event here at Caltech:
Affirming the proposition will be Skeptics Society president Michael Shermer and myself, while negating it will be conservative author Dinesh D’Souza and MIT nuclear engineer Ian Hutchinson. We’ll go back and forth for about two hours, after which Sam Harris will give a talk about his most recent book, Free Will.
Festivities begin at 2pm Pacific time (5pm Eastern). I hadn’t previously mentioned the debate here on the blog, because tickets sold out pretty quickly, and it didn’t seem right to taunt people by mentioning an event they couldn’t come see. But the Skeptics folks have been working hard to set up live-streaming video of the event, and it looks like they’ve succeeded! So you should be able to watch all the fun live on YouTube — and feel free to leave comments here.
[Live-streaming didn’t work, but here’s the video.]
I’ll come back when it’s all over and add some post-debate thoughts.
Update after the debate: first off, very sorry that the live stream didn’t seem to work for many people. (Although the YouTube comments are occasionally funny.) That’s just what sometimes unfortunately happens when you try something new. Pretty sure that video will eventually be available, I’ll link when it appears.
Also I deleted a bunch of comments about string theory from people who don’t take instructions well.
As for the debate, it’s very hard to judge when up on the stage, but I hope there were some enlightening moments. I’m not sure it worked well as a “debate.” I tried to engage a bit with what Ian and Dinesh were saying, but I didn’t feel that they reciprocated — although they might make the same claim about our side. I’m thinking that four people is just too much to have in a debate; it could have been more direct confrontation if there had only been two, with twice as much time for each little speech.
I don’t think I did a very good job in the cross-examinations, but hopefully the actual speeches came across clearly.
The audience was pretty clearly biased toward us from the beginning. Which is great in some sense (go forces of reason!) but I’d actually like to do something similar before an audience that was tilted the other way, or (best of all) completely uncommitted at the start. Preaching to the choir is fun, but doesn’t really change the world.
We had a great crowd, and I very much appreciate everyone who braved the not-that-great-by-Southern-California-standards weather. Would love to hear reactions from people who were actually there.
>Why does Dinesh continue to be invited to these debates?
Everything he says is total nonsense and easily seen as such.
D’Souza’s pretty prestigious, as religious apologists go. That tells you … something.
Even if science reaches its “Holy Grail” of its unified theory of all forces and possibly beyond, how do we know this theory is the reason for existence? We may have a theory that perfectly explains all we observe and even compels existence by its axiomatic laws but is that enough? No. The theory would need to be unique; only this theory would compel existence with no other possibility. Could we prove this is the case? Godel’s Theorm would suggest otherwise. Indeed, quantum theory allows for a particular universe in which we are all convinced we have this proof, even though in actuality the proof is invalid. Thus science cannot, with certainty, answer the ultimate question. Isn’t it interesting that science has a built in disdain for God as the ultimate cause, because it cannot prove or disprove his existence.
Keith. Straw man.
Peter, I think you missed something. Please explain, how my argument is a straw man?
When asked to prove there is no God, “science” always falls back on the wheeze, “You can’t prove a negative”. “It’s too boig a problem to prove”, they bleat, “You’d have to go everywhere inside and outside the universae, to see if God is there. It can’t be done.” That said, however, they then proceed to say that, even though they haven’t proved God doesn’t exist, it is still legitimate and fully within the “ethic” of “science” to insist, incontrovertibly, that there is no God. And, it should be mentioned, they don’t go anywhere near placing their own assertions to the test of whether, in conventional “science” you can prove a positive.
Science has no built in disdain for god, it says it’s irrelevant because it’s untestable. Science is agnostic. It doesn’t care if god is there or not.
I don’t think science is looking for a reason for existence either, It’s just looking at how stuff works. It’s looking for the how, not the why.
Julian, the ethic of science doesn’t insist there is no god. Guess what logical fallacy your argument it?
Peter, the built in disdain science has for God is not the argument, it is my personal observation. My argument still stands. So what did you mean by “straw man”? Seeing no answer, you force me to conclude you have missed the main point of my argument.
I meant by straw man the two things I just said.
If I have missed a bigger point. Can you help me understand it?
And the burden is on the proof of the people saying god does exist, your shifting the burden to the wrong side.
Wait. I think i just replied about Julian’s arguement.
Nope. It was yours Keith.
If you think I havn’t answered your main point, then I may have missed it cause I think I addressed your arguments.
One thing, is there may be no reason for existence, you may be assuming there has to be a reason for existence?
And the personal disdain for science comment, whether it is your observation or not, it is still an argument that I think is incorrect.
I’m sorry but D’Souza should not be invited to a debate like this. I mean, we have three people from the sciences, and then him? He has no qualifications to debate this topic as he is not a scientist and isn’t even considered to be much of a religious scholar (he’s a neo-con author-slash-apologist whose arguments are 100% recycled from the books of other, more respected religious philosophers). He’s also a deeply, deeply intellectually dishonest person and his debates have demonstrated that in spades. Every debate I have ever seen him in involving religion, he uses the tried and true theist tactic of making strawman arguments and attempting to get the other side to defend claims they never made and are never part of the core debate. Apart from his presence, I look forward to the conversation.
Peter, my argument is based on Godel’s theorem. The question becomes how can science prove it own validity? If not, then can we prove its theory of existence, as opposed to any other i.e. God, is valid? This is the debate. The refutation of religion implies God does not exist. If I have correctly applied this theorem, it seems impossible to refute the existence of God.
To be clear, this is not to say it is proof he exists, only that science cannot prove otherwise.
Arrgh, I think Jay is right about “I.” (Maybe that’s why my unconscious knew “me” didn’t sound right…) Myself resigns from grammar.
Keith. Science never refutes the existence of god or anything. It just builds evidence either way. Is that argument still not a straw man?
So you’re going down the post modernist route? Post modernists look left, then right before they cross the road.
Science can not prove it’s own validity, again it can just build evidence for it, or against it. The evidence keeps building up for it, that’s why we can talk right now even though we are in different parts of the world.
yeah, one is an art (where we create meaning) and the other is science (where we discover/uncover ‘facts’) — where the problems occur is when arguments in one are confused for arguments in another, which creates such things as Young Earth Creationism and adding Creationism as an alternate theory to Evolution in science classes…
i like to joke that Physicists are modern theologians who have already discovered Deity, they just don’t call it that :3
“”Preaching to the choir is fun, but doesn’t really change the world.””
Changing the world is done by the dying off of the “adherers to old opinion”.
That is easily demonstrated in science, re. religion etc its similar.
Basic thinking is “made” by parents, nothing else.
This is done before age of 10, this is called education,
whereas the anglosaxon use of “education” is nonsense (lacking latin knowledge)
Georg
Please, Keith, just say you like god because of bibles, or whatever else happens to appeal to you. Leave Godel out of this. What did he ever do to you, to be abused like this? He doesn’t deserve this. I think the closest your argument comes to Godel’s work is that you use the word “incomplete” in a sentence.
Sean, I thought you did pretty good. I agree with you that 4 people is too much. I think debates should be a full format cross-examination because that is the best way to have debaters directly engage with opposing arguments.
I actually got worried in the beginning of your cross-examination. I was thinking, “Oh brother. Where is he going with this?” But then I did see the point you were trying to make.
In my opinion, the only problem you and Shermer had was the affirmation you were trying to defend! I’m an atheist, but I think “Has Science Refuted Religion?” is yet another ridiculous debate topic much like, “Does God exist?” It’s too broad, too vague. Science isn’t about 100% proof, so metaphysically, D’Souza and Hutchinson had it in the bag before the debate even began.
Now, if the topic was “Has Science rendered the specific Christian belief of D’Souza and Hutchinson unlikely?” then the answer is hell yeah.
Interesting debate, but I find the title a bit peculiar. Religion exists, just like music, so in a sense it clearly has not been refuted.
Perhaps what was meant was:
“Does science refute the existence of God?”
or
‘Will science eventually refute religion i.e. eventually remove belief in God?”
Dr. Carroll,
I, along with all who sat in my row, felt that you were the strongest speaker. You did wonderfully. Thank you for defending reason.
-Brendan
Discover? Google First Scandal.
The brief video with “science rules” and “reason rules” reminds me of Al Plantinga’s comment re. the (absolutely irrational) belief that all knowledge can be found by science: “like the drunk who insisted on looking for his lost car keys under the streetlight, on the grounds that the light was better there. (In fact it would go the drunk one better: it would be to insist that because the keys would be hard to find in the dark, they must be under the light.)”
http://philosophy.illinoisstate.edu/dbreyer/Spring%202010/PHI%20222/Plantinga_on_Biblical_Scholarship.pdf
Plantinga should change that to a comment on theology.
The drunk had sold his car to fuel the drink habit.
So, there were no keys to lose or find!
At least science has something to look for?