This the most interesting WLC debate i have seen, it is confined to the subject: "Can morality exist without God" and WLC seemed quite off balance at several times. WLC went after Kagan with his usual set of objections, paraphrasing from memory:
- Without God there can be no objective standard of morality
- Without God there is no accountability and the universe eventually burn out, hence why does it matter we behave morally?
- What is the moral thing to do and what is the beneficial thing to do for the individual is often at odds, in the absence of God, why choose the moral thing?
and so on. Rather than stating moral philosophy solve these problems (which is something WLC would pick apart in no time) or go for the usual tirade against God ala Hitchens (Hitchens know how well that work...), Kagan aknowledge there are problems allready in the opening speech and leave it to the listener to deside which side provide the most persuasive solutions.
For the most of the time Kagan does quite well in responding to Craig in a straight-forward manner, and not being forced to provide a bulletproof answers he has time to play the ball back into Craigs court. Craigs answers are then often very weak, for instance Craig go all-in that a cosmic enforcer to give consequences for ones actions is ultimately required for people to have reason to take moral actions that goes against their self-interest. Kagan answer and play it back into Craigs court by asking that if we do what is right in a given situation because it comes back to us in the end, there is really no self-sacrifice? -- Craigs answer is a classic.
Really good debate. I think the tactic Kagan use is the right one for the undefined questions such as existence of objective moral standards or what "caused" the big bang; admit you do not know up front, and attempt to get an explanation why magic/God is an answer of more virtue than "I do not know".