Some background: a few years ago, Evangelical apologist William Lane Caig debated biblical scholar Hector Avalos. Craig went first, and opened with a bizarre stunt: he pointed to a previous debate where Avalos complained about claims made by his opponent (Rubel Shelly) which as far as I could tell (just from listening to Craig, before hearing Avalos' response) were misleading at best. Somehow, this was supposed to show a lack of character on Avalos' part. Craig claimed his personal attack was made solely in order to raise the level of his debate with Avalos. Avalos shrugged off this maneuver at the time, but more recently responded to Craig on this point, along with others that came up in their debate. Craig responded, accusing Avalos of unprofessional ad hominem attacks which Craig said ought to damage Avalos' reputation. Craig also claimed that, with one exception, "his remarks hardly merit comment."
The first problem is that the rationale is bogus: some errors really are so egregious that they call into question a persons competence or integrity, and there's nothing wrong with saying so in public debate. What's truly disgusting about Craig's response however, is the hypocrisy, since Craig was the first one to resort to personal attacks in his dealings with Avalos.
Someday, I will probably cease to be surprised by Craig's utter disregard for anything resembling professional ethics (which is why I refuse to call him a philosopher or a scholar, in spite of his doctorates). For the moment, though, he continues to astound me.
2 comments:
Listen to the audio again.
He calls Avalos' behaviour, "unprofessional conduct" but he doesn't make an ad hominem argument. An ad hominem argument is attacking the person concluding from that that they are wrong. Craig never did this. Craig continues his speech with arguments which do not depend at all on Avalos.
Craig never says, "Avalos is a dishonest, unprofessional academic. We ought to dismiss all of his points tonight because of this."
In fact, he even explains why he began the debate with saying these things. He said,
"I say all of this simply to preempt any such strategy being employed in tonight's debate. We want to focus on the evidence, not on people. I hope, Hector, that we can agree to conduct our discussion tonight according to the rules of professional etiquette and decorum that we would exercise if we were speaking, say, a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, and in that way I think we can help to ensure a profitable discussion this evening."
Stop being dishonest, Hallquist.
Now I see that I made a mistake in the original post--I linked to what Avalos said twice instead of linking to Craig's "response."
Anyway, I wasn't using "personal attack" in the sense of any overt fallacy, just in the sense of "an attack on someone's character." Ironically, by your standards, Craig is being dishonest because he accused Avalos of an ad hominem even though Avalos had never committed the fallacy you describe.
The real problem is not that it is always wrong to question someone's character. That's actually why Craig's response makes no sense--he would like to dismiss all complaints about his behavior as mere "ad hominems."
And furthermore, he can't possibly believe it's always wrong to question someone's character, given the things he's said about Avalos, hence the hypocrisy.
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