Non-Christians generally start out by defining Christianity in their own terms and then arguing against Christianity based on those same mistaken ideas. And then can't understand why Christians refuse to take their arguments seriously.

I usually point out to non-christians that it's not their argument I'm against so much as the facts they think they are basing their argument on. You can't argue with Christians against their beliefs when you don't first grasp what it is that Christian really believes.

This goes double for people like Waren who themselves don't fully understand Christianity and try to argue it anyway. Both sides of the argument are based on wrong headed thinking. Nobody wins. And the Christian argument usually comes across looking foolish.

A game of philisophical badminton absent of any agreed upon absolutes. In the arena of sense oriented reason both made interesting points. In the arena of God’s Word Sam Harris is a fool. I thought I read somewhere that we should not answer a fool in his folly.

Apologetics has a very limited scope of effectiveness. But to sit on a couch and banter back and forth about the existance of God presents the issue as up for grabs. The atheist should be given no credibility and should be prayed for and warned. His future is cataclysmic!

It appears I am agreeing with you again, Pr. Frueh.
;)

I did have some opinions regarding both men before I read the debate.

Here are my random thoughts:

I think it is appropriate for Rick Warren to decline debates. It is okay to say, "I am not an authority in this matter, please consult someone else," say John Frame, William Lane Craig, etc.

If someone asked me to debate our friends Lawrence or Henry Frueh on the subject of eschatology, I would quickly decline citing my lack of expertise or knowledge in the area of "eschatology and NT Studies." I simply am not well-read in that area.

I wish the "Christian" position would not have been represented by Warren, especially when debating a knowledgable, Ph.D student in neuroscience. To be honest, as a Christian theist myself, I actually found myself agreeing with Harris most of the time. I liked Harris's reasoning strategy better than Warren.

I did not like Warren's reasoning, nor his choice of words a couple of times.

As a Christian theist, I myself do not evidently "see the footprints of God everywhere." I wrestle with the problem of evil, suffering, my sin, and other important issues in life.

However, I do see the "footprints of God" after I am forced to go back and forth over Scripture, causing me to "reform and revise my human lens (mind)" in order to bring it in conformity with Christ.

Harris writes, "I'm very close to the literature on evolutionary biology. And the basic point is that evolution by natural selection is random genetic mutation over millions of years in the context of environmental pressure that selects for fitness."

One theistic move would be to bypass the **how** of evolution, and just focus on the core question of:

**What is the matter with matter?**

The matter (problem) with matter is that matter is not infinite, nor does it possess anything resembling eternality or everlasting attributes. Some have taken this finite fact (universe is contingent) and argued for a beginning for the universe (J.P. Moreland "Kalam Cosmological Argument"), that simply could not arise by chance. I assume most readers are already familiar with this "universe is contingent" theistic argument (offered by William Lane Craig).

WARREN: Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions. I'm willing to admit my presuppositions: there are clues to God. I talk to God every day. He talks to me.

HARRIS: What does that actually mean?

I think Harris won this point above. As a Christian, I am very skeptical of "God talk" because it often opens the door to theological heresy. I ask the same question that Harris asks.

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer.

I wish Warren would not have argued for the above. Again, it would have been better for Warren (and for DieHardColtsFan if I was in his place) to simply say, "look, how about you debate a Christian scholar like William Lane Craig (2 earned Ph.Ds from Europe) or
J.P. Moreland, or others.

Warren is mistakenly appealing to subjective "answered prayer" to rest his case of God's existence upon. I have a disagreement with that debating strategy.

WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I've had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry.

HARRIS: Let me be the first.

Here Warren again appeals to the subjective, and throws a disrespectful punch at atheists. Warren is ignoring the heart of the debate, and instead chooses to argue points that are loaded with human subjectivity and emotional **ad hominem arguments**.

Harris states, "I'm not a moral relativist."

This should have been a clue to understand where Harris is coming from. Harris is not a **scientific naturalist (SN)**, defined as one who believes that ultimate reality is reducible to scientistic categories (the physics or hard core sciences). Harris is not a SN.

Rather, he is a PN (pluralistic naturalist) who believes that only some of ultimate reality is reducible to the scientistic (defined in terms of "scientism", not science properly speaking) categories. Pluralistic naturalists, like John McDowell, believe in a robust ontology of multiple kinds of entities, both immaterial, psychological, spiritual, as well as phyical. The SN only affirms the physical.

To debate anyone, it is charitable and honorable to debate them using premises and definitions that they themselves employ, and not ones the opponent constructs ("strawman fallacy") in order to destroy them.

Since Harris is a PN and not a SN, maybe a different reasoning strategy concerning moral relativism could be employed.

Warren states, "Here's the difference between you and me. I am open to the possibility that I am wrong in certain areas, and you are not."

I really wish the central issues of the debate could be addressed, instead of Rick Warren causing the discussion to negatively break down into "I and you." The introduction of the "personal" prevents progress. This "I vs. you" is not charitable, and it hinders debate.

I consider the following to be one of the low, discouraging points of the debate by Rick Warren. I sympathize with Harris here. Notice Warren's choice of words, "idiot" and "arrogant." Whatever happened to engaging in good philosophy for once and setting aside the personal attacks?

WARREN: So you are open to the possibility that you might be wrong about Jesus?

HARRIS: And Zeus. Absolutely.

WARREN: And what are you doing to study that?

HARRIS: I consider it such a low-probability event that I—

WARREN: A low probability? When there are 96 percent believers in the world? So is everybody else an idiot?

HARRIS: It is quite possible for most people to be wrong—as are most Americans who think that evolution didn't occur.

WARREN: That's an arrogant statement.

HARRIS: It's an honest statement.

The introduction of emotional words by Rick Warren himself ("idiot", "arrogant") prevents effective dialogue on the core issues of the debate. Name-calling never solves anything.

I wish a different Christian speaker would have responded appropriately to the following by Harris:

HARRIS: OK, he allows it. I would argue that we got rid of slavery not because we read the Bible more closely. We got rid of slavery despite the profound inadequacies of the Bible. We got rid of slavery because we realized it was manifestly evil to treat human beings as farm equipment. As it is.

Rick Warren again resorts to name-calling:

The person who says, "Oh, I just believe them all," is an idiot because the religions flat-out contradict each other.

But the atheist does not believe the above. What the atheist believes is that the "non-physical" supervenes upon a physical base, such that the non-physical is reducible in principle to the physical base. The non-physical here may be defined as "theology" or "world religions," but it (according to the grand metaphysical story of naturalism) necessarily is reducible to the hard sciences. Thus, religious diversity or conflicting religious truth claims are really no big deal, because they all are fundamentally (on an ontological level) reducible to the hard sciences.

I disagree again with Warren below. I disagree with his debating strategy.

WARREN: OK, then why can't you just take the next step? Because right now you're talking in extremely nonrational terms.

HARRIS: There's nothing irrational about it. You can close your eyes in meditation and lose the sense of your physical body, totally. Many people draw from that the metaphysical conclusion that "I'm just spirit, and I can transcend the body." That's not the only conclusion you have to draw from that experience, and I don't think it's the best conclusion.

WARREN: You're more spiritual than you think. You just don't want a boss. You don't want a God who tells you what to do.

Concerning the below:

This would have been a wonderful time to introduce Reformed Epistemology (Plantinga) and how RE destroyed the Cliffordian maxim which underlies most of Harris'
thought processes. Again, a different speaker could have done a much better job than both me and Warren.

HARRIS: I don't want to pretend to be certain about anything I'm not certain about.

Warren writes the following below:

Altruism comes out of knowing there is more than this life, that there is a sovereign God, that I am not God. We're both betting. He's betting his life that he's right. I'm betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he's right, I've lost nothing. If I'm right, he's lost everything. I'm not willing to make that gamble.

First, I am surprised that Rick Warren used the word, "sovereign." Second, his "I have lost nothing by following Jesus" argument sounds more like Pascal type of reasoning in stark contrast to the Biblical teaching found in 1 Corinthians 15: 12-34.

Neither I nor Rick Warren are probably competent to debate a well-versed, soft-spoken, articulate atheist scholar who just happens to be getting his degree in neuroscience. But overall, I was very disappointed in Rick Warren's share of the debate.

Excellent, DieHard. Thank you.

Henry writes, "I thought I read somewhere that we should not answer a fool in his folly."

Personally, I think my own original understanding of the term "fool" (as listed above by Henry in reference to the Book of Proverbs) has changed over the years. I now believe that the "fool" in Proverbs is a fool precisely due to his actions in the moral dimension, which is linked to a bad will.

Overall, I think Henry (and others) and I share some agreement on apologetical themes in general.

I would like to encourage readers to take Warren's debate and use it as an incentive to study the Augustinian theory of divine illumination, as noted by Ronald Nash.

I think that those Augustinian insights, gleaned from the "epistemological Logos" of Hebrews, provides the philosophical tools needed to effectively rebut both pluralistic naturalism and scientific naturalism.

I do think that good biblical theology would encourage us to **engage unbelieving culture** (as opposed to many who would advocate the ostrich approach of "sticking our heads in the sand,") so as to contextualize our Gospel message and communicate clearly to our audience.

The existence of mind-independent **normativity** and its essential role for human knowers and knowledge-claims provides a case for theism. Then given the well-known empirical support for Christianity in particular, a broader case can be made for Christian theism to be true.

Think about "normativity" for a second. While most apologists spend their time debating whether or not Genesis 1 teaches 6 days, or years or millions of years, one fact that remains clear is the existence of normativity.

Normativity, defined as "rational linkage," is true and reflective of any place anywhere on Earth.

If:
a.) Tom is a football player,
b.) all football players live in Texas,

conclusion: then Tom must (normativity: "rational ought-ness") live in Texas.

The conclusion displays normativity. We may, of course, disagree with the premises, particularly proposition b. After all, we do in fact know football players that live in other states, like Peyton Manning. But the point is that normativity is expressed in propositions. It is impossible for normativity and propositions to be "reduced or explained away" to psychology, etc.

How we express normativity in propositions may be conventional. But the fact that truth is indeed conveyed through propositions is not conventional.

Where am I going with this?

Well, for the atheist (naturalist) the existence of normativity is kinda "odd." The atheist is committed to the view that physical (read: material) nature and nature alone is reality. The theist believes that a rational, immaterial God is ultimate reality, and that physical nature is a creation by divine will.

It is so "odd" and "out of place" for normativity to exist in an atheist world.

Normativity, for the atheist, is the 900 pound gorilla in the living room. You cannot escape it, but it is kinda "odd" because normativity (which is immaterial, and non-physical) expresses logical necessity (the rational "oughtness" or the "rational punch" or "rational power" by which propositions are linked together), and logical necessity is "odd" in a world defined by the atheist himself.

This "oddness" has caused the naturalist camp to be divided into 2 groups:

scientific naturalists (SN) and pluralistic naturalists (PN).

The SN attempts to deny that logical necessity is indeed reflective of the world. SN wants to "reduce" logic to psychology, or sociology, or ultimately to physics. I believe all of these attempts at "reduction"
are futile. It is also relevant to point out that other atheists, like pluralistic naturalists, also disbelieve in SN.

The PN, realizing that the SN is wrong, but yet wanting to remain a card-carrying member of the naturalist camp, does the following:

the PN says, "unlike SN, we must believe in normativity and logical necessity. But we must labor to find out how in the world logical necessity exists in an atheist world."

And the basic response of the PN is:

"we know logical necessity because we as humans know it through education."

Now, this PN move, has problems, because it fails to account in principle how our finite minds can even grasp modal logic, propositions, or necessity. Pluralistic Naturalists, for the most part, are materialists, and so they deny mind-body dualism. They are materialists, and deny the mind, believing that human knowers only have a material brain. On this view, it is hard to see how a brain can "grasp" or "connect" with necessity (which is immaterial) or normativity.

Now I am moving into philosophy of mind here. So let me move back to where I originally started from.

Logical necessity and normativity is true and reflective of anywhere on planet Earth. But normativity and logical necessity is also true and reflective of anywhere in our solar universe. It is also reflective of space and on undiscovered planets. This fact is hard to reconcile with an atheistic worldview, thus the many historical attempts to denigrate logical necessity and replace it and "reduce it" to contingent psychological generalizations.

Here is where the Christian apologist steps in. Rick Warren could have said to Sam Harris:

"Look, you are uttering statements and propositions that, to be meaningful, convey and possess logical necessity and normativity. How in an atheistic world does normativity exist? That is the ontological question. But it GETS WORSE for the atheist. The second question is, "how in an atheist world does finite human knowers with brains even have epistemic access to our knowledge of normativity and logical necessity? That is the epistemological question."

I believe Christian theism, and not atheism, has the answer to both questions. God has made humans in his image, and the Epistemological Logos of the Book of Hebrews provides "epistemological Light" to all mankind. We know and possess knowledge because God has created us with innate A PRIORI equipment that can grasp **non-natural** entities such as normativity, necessity, etc.

This is the answer that Rick Warren should have given to Harris.

I should point out, that apologetics is quite useful in witnessing to atheists and especially Muslims. My act of witnessing to my cab driver was primary an apologetic one. In my line of work, I find apologetics to be a much more useful thing than you guys.

I want to communicate the following apologetical insight clearly.

Like the naturalist (atheist), I believe humans do possess a physical brain. I only insist that humans also have a God-given mind. I am a dualist.

For example, we can take the average human brain ("clump of tissue containing cells, neurons"), measuring x amount of centimeters containing y amount of mass, and place it in a large enough petri dish in a scientific laboratory for the purpose of running "experiments."

We can conduct a "brain in a vat" experiment, with wires running through the brain, providing jolts of electricity to simulate a superficial "brain in action" experiment.

This can be similar to what happens in open heart surgeries where the human patient is hooked up to a heart/lung bypass machine, so that the cardiac surgeon can operate on a leaky mitral valve in the heart.

The naturalist will say, "for all practical purposes, see, we have a brain MINUS the mind. Therefore, we need no appeal to a God-given mind because we can artificially re-create a "brain in action" in our lab. Therefore, the appeal to immaterial rationality, or the appeal to a God-given mind is not necessary. Therefore, naturalism is true, and the need for a God-given mind is a product of the primitive Dark Ages."

The problem for the naturalist with the brain example is the absence of "grounding" for our everyday knowledge of both the ontological existence of normativity and our epistemological access to laws of logic, moral laws, propositions, etc.

Even in the "brain in a vat" example, that is **not fully identical** to our everyday human experience of accessing propositions, logical necessity, truth, etc.

Using wires, jolts of electricity with a clump of tissue in a lab is not equivalent with our immaterial thoughts of rationality, access to propositions across all possible worlds, etc.

Now Richard Carrier (on the Secular Web or Internet Infidels) will appeal to the "brain is really a computer" type of argument. The problem here is that as humans we know we can THINK. Computers can never think across all possible worlds, because their range is limited by inputs and data generated by man-made programs, etc.

But humans can think. We can conduct thought experiments across all possible modal worlds. On a strictly ontological level, the immaterial existence of normativity, propositions ("the engine for our truth claims") and truth itself is contradictory with scientific naturalism or materialism. But also, how can we explain our epistemological access to these immaterial thoughts?

If humans merely have "a lump of tissue containing cells and neurons, (brain)", how can I rationally explain and defend the following propositions:

P1: I know that rape is an intrinsic moral evil.

P2: I know that "2+2=4" is true on planet Earth, on planet Neptune, and it is also true on undiscovered solar systems that human astronauts may never ever discover.

P3: I, as a human knower, SEE and GRASP the following entailment, "if the best QB is from New Orleans, went to Tennessee, and plays for the Colts," in conjunction with the separate proposition, "Peyton Manning is the only person that satisfies the above," then "Peyton Manning is the best quarterback."

I am not referring to the above premises. I am only saying that I as a human knower SEE and can GRASP the ENTAILMENT.

How can a lump of tissue grasp logical entailment across all possible worlds?

These are the types of answers that I really wish Rick Warren would have used in his responses to the atheist Sam Harris.