William Lane Craig Analysis

I found the debate between the theist William Lane Craig and his counterpart an atheist Christopher Hitchens very interesting. Craig’s first point was that the number of past events in the universe must be finite. He explains that there must have been a “beginning” and a cause to this beginning. This seemed like a very simple point to make, but after thinking about it I think that it makes so much sense. I don’t think that the universe has just always existed, something had to have been created by a someone. There is also a lot of complexity and organization within nature that I don’t think happened just by chance. It seems to me that nature was designed by some higher power. Craig also points out that our moral values are innate; they didn’t

just evolve over time. If these values have always existed, then there must have been something that distilled them in us. Craig’s counterpart Hitchens then explains that evolution disproves the idea that the universe was designed and that there are some parts of nature that are “bad designs” so therefore if there was a creator, he would be inefficient. I found Craig’s rebuttal to Hitchens’s statement a good argument however. Craig explains that the first chapter of Genesis allows for evolution to have occurred, but also that while there are scientific arguments backing up evolution, there are also scientific arguments that find evolution improbable. He also argues that God doesn’t need to be efficient, because efficiency is only important to people with limited time and resources. I found these arguments the most interesting throughout the debate because I have heard arguments like Hitchens’s against the existence of God before, but never really a rebuttal to them. Upon hearing Craig’s counter-arguments though, this made me further confident in the existence of God. I think Craig had the stronger arguments out of the two, and I think this shows considering that Hitchens yielded from having a concluding speech.