Over in the comments section of the relevant post at Prosblogion, Morriston has been so kind as to give us some helpful remarks, as well as a link to his opening statement (along with the powerpoint slides --thanks, Wes!):
"About my "debate" with Bill Craig... It was actually billed as a "dialogue," it was a friendly event, and there were no big surprises. Needless to say, we didn't have a meeting of the minds.
In view of the interest expressed by some people in this thread, and in view of the fact that one or two who heard the "dialogue" didn't understand what I was trying to say about an endless series of future praises, I have posted my response to Craig's opening statement here:
http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Emorristo/Morriston-Craig-kalam-dialogue-debate.html
There is also a series of powerpoint slides that go with my response. I tried to cover all of Craig's arguments in twenty minutes. It wasn't easy! I have included a link to the powerpoint as well.
In addition to the links to the opening statement and the powerpoint, I have included a few comments on what I take to be the inadequacy of Craig's claim that an endless series of future praises would be a merely "potential infinite."
Whether it's an actual or a potential infinite depends on how those terms are defined. All that matters, I claim, is whether the case as I described it is possible. I think it is. If I'm right about that, then all the paradoxical features of the actual infinite can be reproduced for an endless series of distinct, determinate, successive events.
I further argue that "presentism" (which Craig also appealed to) doesn't help his case."
He also left a later comment confirming Craig's nominalism:
"For what it's worth, he told me that he's a nominalist."
2 comments:
Craig's recent nominalism is interesting, isn't it?
Though Craig used to argue that the existence of abstract objects was evidence for God (through a weird version of conceptualism; see his debates with Tooley and Washington), he now leans towards the idea that abstract objects do not exist. That helps him avoid a powerful argument against God, and strengthens his Kalam argument (if abstract objects don’t exist, it’s more plausible to say that actual infinities can’t exist, and therefore that the universe began to exist in the finite past).
I hope the audio/video eventually gets posted of the Craig-Morriston debate. I'm way more interested in that one than the Craig-Carrier or Craig-Hitchens or any other recent/upcoming religion debates.
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