"Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?" Craig and Carrier Debate

Now that the debate is finally over with I think it would be fitting to give a final report of everything, beginning to end. What follows is a somewhat lengthy account of the debate beginning at the planning stages, running through negotiations and preparations, and finally ending with my own review of the debate. I’ve labeled these main sections so you can skip whatever doesn’t interest you and read what does.

The Beginning

Everything began way back in the fall semester of 2007 when I had the idea of contacting some well-known scholars to see what it would take to bring them to my school (Northwest Missouri State University). My first choice was Sam Harris, an author who writes enjoyable books and essays about religion, whether you would classify him as a “scholar” or not. But when I contacted a representative, I was informed that it would cost—brace yourself—a whopping $26,000 to get him to come speak on campus. Our largest comfortable auditorium holds a little over a thousand people, so I did the math and determined that we could purchase a thousand copies of The End of Faith and a thousand copies of Letter to a Christian Nation (his two books), give them away to students, and we’d still be spending about $6,000 less than we would spend having him come visit. I was reminded of a line in Harris’ first book: “The philosopher Peter Unger has made a persuasive case that a single dollar spent on anything but the absolute essentials of our survival is a dollar that has some starving child's blood on it." (The End of Faith, p. 141) With this in mind, I didn’t think there was any way I could morally justify spending twenty-six thousand blood-soaked dollars on a couple of hours with Sam Harris.

I next considered Richard Carrier, since his website said he would do this sort of thing for free, given that his expenses are all paid. I was impressed by the work of his that I had read and considered him a worthy opponent for contemporary Christian apologists, so I also contacted Dr. William Lane Craig’s speaking representative to see if he’d be interested in a debate. I was surprised to learn not only that the two of them would be willing to debate, but that the event could be pulled off for a substantially lesser amount of money than Harris alone would have charged.

I asked Carrier what topics he would like to debate with Craig and he told me that he was not really interested in debating the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus, since he had come to believe that both of those topics are too large to cover in a short oral debate. Nevertheless, he gave me four other options: (1) Do We Need God To Be Moral?, (2) Are Moral Facts Evidence of God?, (3) Does God Care About Us?, and (4) Are The Gospels Historically Reliable? After eliminating the first topic I passed the other three along to Craig and of these options he chose to debate “Are Moral Facts Evidence of God?" This would have been a fitting debate, since Craig has published widely on the topic already and has even debated it with some well-known scholars (see Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? for example). Carrier has written and lectured on the same topic (see Sense and Goodness Without God).

This remained the planned topic for over a year until further negotiations convinced Carrier to reconsider the possibility of debating the resurrection of Jesus. He really wanted to debate “Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?” before debating the resurrection, since he thinks that topic has to be settled first—before we attempt to infer any “facts” from the Gospels. But he said that he’d debate the resurrection as long as Craig made it clear that he was in fact turning down the Gospel debate and gave some explanation why. (Carrier’s criticism of Craig on this point can be found here and Craig responded to that criticism on his website here.) Needless to say, I was pleased that they agreed to debate the resurrection, since that was the debate I think most people wanted to see.

Preparations

I had actually been preparing for the event all throughout the negotiation stages by contacting people here at the university to find out about the funding and venue. We secured half of the funding from Student Senate (when I appeared at one of their meetings and talked about the planned event) and the other half from a Culture of Quality grant. We were also lucky to be able to secure the Mary Linn Performing Arts Center on a date that worked for everybody (March 18).

To advertise the debate, I contacted several Christian organizations on campus and local church leaders to let them know that it would be taking place, and to encourage them to help spread the word. I was definitely satisfied with the responses I got from these individuals and was thankful for their help. But as the news of the debate spread around the internet I began receiving numerous emails asking for details and asking me to reserve seats, something I was willing to do for out-of-towners. All told, these communications comprised hundreds of emails, and we had about fifty people drive in from places like Kansas City, Omaha, St. Louis, and even Columbus, Ohio (if that person ever showed up). And these were just the out-of-towners who had emailed me to reserve seats. I personally knew several other people who drove quite a distance to be there.

My friend Brett Henggeler generously volunteered to make posters for the event. When he emailed his designs to me I was stunned at how great they were. In fact, everybody who commented on them (including both Carrier and Craig—and the faculty here) mentioned how sharp the posters looked, which is all a testament to Brett’s great artwork. As it happened, I had several posters left over after the debate ended and a number of people asked me if they could get one, so I gave them away until I ran out. Brett told me that any time I need posters designed for an event I should contact him, and this is something I'll definitely take him up on if I ever plan another one.

One other thing we needed to do to prepare for the debate was hire somebody to record it. I contacted the Department of Mass Communication here at Northwest and discussed our options with them. We finally decided to hire them to record the debate with two cameras and edit the footage together afterward. (The footage, by the way, will probably be made available by Craig and Carrier at some point in the relatively near future, once the video editing is finished.) I was recently amused, looking through the comments on the debate in a discussion forum, to see somebody write: “Anybody wanna take bets that the video will be "drunk-teen-using-cell-phone" quality?" Let’s hope this person was wrong, and that the video turns out to be of much better quality than the unauthorized one currently posted on YouTube.

The Week of the Debate

On Monday, March 16 Craig was slated to debate Dr. Wes Morriston on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I was particularly interested in seeing this debate, as I had heard that Morriston’s critiques of Kalam are the best to be found in the literature, and I know that Craig is the best defender of Kalam to be found. So great are Morriston’s critiques of the argument that noted atheist John Loftus suggested on his blog that Craig might have chosen to not mention Morriston in his popular book Reasonable Faith because he didn’t want people to know about his devastating arguments! That, of course, is just speculation, but it generated enough interest in my mind to want to attend the debate. Since I was planning on driving Craig up to Maryville on Tuesday morning anyway, I decided to make the four hour trip to Fulton, MO to watch the Monday night debate and stay at the Holiday Inn Express.

When I arrived at the debate that evening I had Loftus’ new book (Why I Became an Atheist) in hand, having just read through his treatment of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I was considering asking Craig about his theory of time during the audience Q&A session, as Loftus quotes scholars who criticize Craig for accepting a theory that is rejected by most physicists. Instead, when my opportunity came to ask a question, I simply asked Craig to respond to one of Morriston’s arguments that he didn’t have time to respond to during the debate. But before the debate even started, as I sat in the fourth or fifth row, Craig came in and started talking to some of the students in attendance so I went over and introduced myself. He told me that he had been spending all of his time preparing for his resurrection debate with Carrier and hadn’t spent much time at all planning for Morriston. This was interesting, since I had heard that Morriston was the best and assumed Craig would have some major obstacles in the debate. I told Craig that some people have been saying that Morriston’s critiques are the best to be found and he responded something like this: "Well if that’s the best case to be made against the Kalam argument, then I think it’s in pretty good shape!"

The next morning I picked Craig up from the place he was staying and we immediately began discussing the debate with Morriston (I had thought Morriston made a pretty good case regarding many of the arguments). Over the course of our four hour drive we discussed many things: Kalam, Craig’s moral argument for God’s existence, and the resurrection of Jesus stand out most in my mind. In particular, regarding the resurrection, much of the conversation centered on Richard Carrier, whom Craig seems to not trust to fairly and objectively evaluate the evidence for Christianity. I suspect that feeling is probably mutual; Carrier probably believes that Craig is too biased in favor of Christianity to make a fair assessment. One topic that I intended to bring up during that car ride was Craig’s (in my opinion) poor argument against abortion that he offered some time ago on his website. By the time I remembered that I wanted to talk to him about this we were already eating lunch in Maryville, and I thought it might be a bit distasteful.

That evening, Craig, Carrier, Dr. Field (a philosophy professor here—and sponsor of the Philosophy Club), and a few of us philosophy students were able to dine together and talk about various issues. Carrier discussed his dissertation, Craig mentioned the philosophical issues he has been researching of late, Dr. Field told some entertaining stories of old students, and the rest of us talked about work we’ve been doing this semester and our plans for the future.

The next morning Craig lectured on God and morality to Dr. Field’s Introduction to Ethics class—a group of students that were seemingly so unresponsive that they might as well have been listening to music on their iPods. After the short lecture, when the floor was opened up for questions, only one student in the entire class actually asked questions. The rest of the questions came from myself, my friends Ukpong Eyo and Darrin Rasberry (graduate students in Iowa who drove down for the occasion), and Dr. Field. Shortly after this session ended, Carrier gave a talk over three of his books: his dissertation, Sense and Goodness Without God, and On the Historicity of Jesus Christ (which he hasn’t finished writing yet). Darrin and Eyo also attended this, and after the talk the four of us went out to eat lunch and talked about Carrier’s work.

After more hanging out with Carrier, I took him back to his hotel and spent the rest of the day making sure everything was prepared for the debate that evening. As I was checking over everything in the Performing Arts Center, the guy who manages the auditorium told me that we’d be lucky to get a few hundred people to come, and at most we would have five hundred. Since the auditorium has over a thousand seats, he was suggesting that it would be half-empty for the debate. Those who attended can attest to the fact that he was certainly wrong, as there were hardly any empty seats, and at least a thousand people there. I was definitely happy with the turnout.

Review of the Debate

Part of me was expecting Craig to win this debate, but I also wanted Carrier to give him a run for his money, since I think Carrier is one of the best critics of the resurrection writing today. Craig is extremely talented as a speaker and debater, so everybody was expecting him to give a good presentation. But he’s not just a good speaker; he’s also one of the best contemporary scholars defending the resurrection of Jesus. Since he rarely loses his debates (especially his resurrection debates, from what I’ve seen), the assumption was that he would find some way to beat Carrier. And, I suppose, that’s exactly what happened—at least in a way.

There are two issues here that are often mistakenly wrapped into one: (1) which of the debaters “won”? and (2) which of the debaters presented the better arguments? The first issue is often judged based on how polished a debater was in his presentation, and how rhetorically convincing he was. In this respect, Craig certainly came away with the win, as Carrier was too disorganized during rebuttals whereas Craig seemed to know exactly what he wanted to say and said it forcefully. But the more interesting question is the second one: who presented the better arguments? I can’t make a very informed judgment here, but I’d say that if Craig won on this score as well, he did so by a significantly smaller margin.

Carrier’s arguments, if they are correct, are devastating to Craig’s apologetic for the resurrection. By arguing that the authors of the Gospels intended to write symbolic myths rather than record history, Carrier is taking a position on an issue that is widely disputed among current New Testament scholars. He presented some very intriguing parallels that I do not think were adequately addressed during the debate, and this leads me to think that his conclusion is at least somewhat reasonable, though I'm not completely convinced. However, in trying to show that the Gospels are myth, Carrier was forced to present only a portion of the evidence. If he is able to make a convincing case in On The Historicity of Jesus Christ and begin to get more scholars on his side (even though there already are a number of them) then it's possible that people like Craig will have to take the issue more seriously. Craig's argument rests on the idea that you can extract certain historical facts from these documents, so if it is shown that the authors weren't writing with the intention of recording fact but instead with the intention of telling a meaningfully symbolic story then that will give us sufficient reason to presume that the crucifixion and resurrection stories are themselves symbolic myths (thus making it difficult for Craig to extract historical "facts" from the Gospels).

I won’t go through the entire debate and comment on every detail, but there are a few specific things I want to discuss. First, whether you call it a “fallacy” or not, I feel like Dr. Craig poisoned the well in his opening statement. He explained to the audience that the position he (Craig) takes is mainstream among New Testament scholars whereas Carrier doesn’t even believe that Jesus ever existed, a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement. Before the debate Craig and I had talked about Carrier’s position on the historicity of Jesus and we agreed that Carrier would most likely assume for the debate that Jesus existed and then argue from that assumption that there is not sufficient historical evidence to conclude that he was resurrected. So I was somewhat surprised that Craig thought it necessary to mention this, since we both thought it would be irrelevant to how the debate would play out. But, in mentioning it, Craig was (intentionally or not) turning the audience off to anything Carrier would say during the debate, since he was basically painting him as a radical historian out beyond the fringe, endorsing a position that no legitimate scholars accept. Now, as I said, I don’t know what Craig’s intention was here, but that’s the way it came across. And Craig may not realize it, but this strategy could have easily backfired on him. Carrier could have stood up for his opening statement and said something along the lines of: “Craig does not merely accept the reasonable historical hypothesis that Jesus was a profound religious figure who garnered a following in the first century, he actually believes that Jesus had magic powers! He thinks Jesus performed all sorts of miracles and even died for a weekend before coming back to life in a gloriously indestructible body and then flying into the sky to heaven. Further, he believes that these historical documents we’re dealing with are absolutely inerrant, a position that’s so extreme that virtually no credible New Testament scholars accept it." Carrier could have said this, but he didn’t, which means he either didn’t think of it or didn’t want to play that game.

There were times that I think Craig may have been a little too harsh. For example, I think he claimed that Carrier was a “crank” (or else he referred to Carrier’s “crank exegesis”). I’m not sure if this sort of accusation is necessary (or even appropriate) in an oral debate. He also said something like “Carrier needs to learn to read the lines before he can read between the lines,” which is a very clever turn of phrase, but again came across as more of an insult than an actual rebuttal. Of course, the vast majority of those in attendance sided with Craig, and that was clear throughout the evening as statements such as these by Craig caused eruptions of applause and laughter. Most of the people I talked to after the debate (even my Christian friends) felt sorry for Carrier and were even apologetic about the rudeness of the audience. Some of these same people I talked to were disappointed that Craig "stooped" to this sort of behavior. I had a good discussion with a professor a couple of days later and when I asked him if he learned anything from the debate he explained at length that the only thing he learned was that some people are more interested in pompous displays of their intellectual superiority than in actually educating the audience.

Then again, I had friends who were simply disappointed in Carrier’s performance. Many of these complaints had little to do with his arguments but were valid critiques nonetheless. Carrier really does need to be more polished if he’s going to continue debating, but this is not something we can expect him to already be good at, since he just doesn’t have the debating background that Craig has. Yet some of my friends even criticized Carrier for arguing that Jesus should have appeared to everybody in the world, and that the fact that he doesn’t somehow falsifies Christianity. I may blog about this topic later, but I think the confusion here is that it only falsifies some forms of Christianity and not others. And many people were turned off by Carrier’s claims that the early Christians hallucinated. One of my professors seemed to take Carrier to be saying that his own religious experiences were hallucinations, and because of this he didn’t seem to much appreciate what Carrier had to say.

One peculiar thing happened during the debate that some people have been mentioning in their online reviews of the event. After Carrier's first rebuttal, a large number of students stood up and made their way out of the auditorium while Craig was standing at the microphone waiting to begin his next rebuttal. It's been claimed by some of Craig's supporters that these people left because Carrier was just god-awful, but it should be pointed out that such an inference is pure speculation. It's much more likely that these people just had somewhere else to be and didn't realize that the debate was going to be so long. In any case, if they left because Carrier wasn't good enough to keep them interested, this means that Craig also wasn't good enough to keep them interested in the conversation (since they also didn't stick around to see what else he had to say).

Overall, though, I think this was a great event. It was a real treat to be able to host these two individuals (both of whom I have a great deal of respect for), and it was satisfying to finally have the two of them debate this topic (as I’m sure many others will agree). I eagerly look forward to a possible future debate between them.