Arts and Sciences. Debate with William Lane Craig Kagan debated the topic "Is God necessary for Morality" with analytic philosopher, theologian and Christian apologist William Lane Craig at Columbia University. Randal Rauser, a Canadian Baptist theologian and professor of historical theology, rated this debate Craig's worst performance, saying, "it wasn’t simply because Kagan was himself a surprisingly good debater with an undeniably charming folksy incredulity. It was that Craig’s arguments were shown to be mere emotive talking points based on highly dubious premises". Richard Carrier, an author and activist whose works focus on the historicity of Jesus, atheism and empiricism, cited this debate as one of Craig's two biggest losses, along with one with physicist Sean M. Carroll. After the debate, Craig wrote, "the view Kagan defended in the debate was not his [Kagan's] view at all". Instead, Craig wrote, Kagan is a radical consequentialist. Craig also wrote:I did respond briefly to Prof. Kagan's view, Alexander, but I didn't press the point because our hosts with the Veritas Forum had made it very clear to me that they were not interested in having a knock-down debate but a friendly dialogue that would foster a warm and inviting atmosphere for non-believing students at Columbia. The goal was simply to get the issues out on the table in a congenial, welcoming environment, which I think we did. Bibliography The Limits of Morality, Oxford University Press, 1989. . Normative Ethics, Westview Press, 1997. . Death, Yale University Press, 2012. . The Geometry of Desert, Oxford University Press, August 2012. . How to Count Animals, more or less, Oxford University Press, April 2019. . See also American philosophy List of American philosophers References External links Kagan's personal website American philosophers Consequentialists Utilitarians Wesleyan University alumni Princeton University alumni Yale University faculty 20th-century American Jews Jewish philosophers Living people Place of birth missing (living people) 1963 births 21st-century American Jews