I found out at the last minute that I’d be able to make it to the upcoming debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig. I’ll definitely be blogging it, hopefully with audience reactions, though when the post goes up will depend a bit on how tired I am from all the driving required.

I’m stoked about this debate because in some ways, Harris is my favorite out of the so-called “Four Horsemen.” Don’t get me wrong–Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens have all done great stuff (especially Dawkins’ popular science writing!)–but when it comes to their critiques of religion, I think Harris made the greatest contribution. He strikes me as a lot smarter than most people give him credit for, and he’s got some strengths that make me think he’ll do well in a public debate: he’s good with concise jabs, and never seems rattled by criticism in the videos I’ve seen.

The topic of the debate is the relationship between God and morality, which is good, because it means Craig won’t be spamming arguments to quite the extent he does in “Does God exist?” debates. In spite of that, I have a hard time envisioning how the debate will turn out. Craig is sometimes pretty nasty to his opponents (i.e. ignoring Richard Carrier’s arguments and focusing on calling him a “crackpot”), and I probably shouldn’t be surprised if Craig treats Harris the same way… but another part of me is asking, “would he really stoop that low again?” And I’ve never seen Harris in a situation quite like this before, so I don’t really know what he’ll do.

But tomorrow, I won’t have to wonder. I’ll get to see it all first-hand.

P.S. If you can’t get enough of me talking about Craig, I recently posted a longish blog comment on debating him. The stuff on how to do a debate on the resurrection, I’ve said before, but I also kick around some new ideas about how to debate the existence of God.