Dawkins vs. William L. Craig - The Greatest No-Show on Earth

[Julius Seeker]

William Lane Craig, perhaps the top Christian Apologetic in the world, is coming to Oxford University and will either debate Richard Dawkins on the existence of God.

If Dawkins doesn't show up (Which is strongly rumoured), Craig has stated he will instead host a lecture criticizing his arguments against the existence of God written in The God Delusion (by Dawkins).

Fellow Atheist and Oxford Don Daniel Came writes:

“The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.
“I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House.”

UK Telegraph article

Hopefully this statement implying Dawkins as a coward, will be enough to get Dawkins to defend his views. My personal thought is that if Dawkins is not going to debate Craig, then he is probably not confident that he will be able to defeat Craig's arguments in support of the existence of God; rather than choosing not to due so by any excuse he could possibly make.... He represents himself as being open to being very open to debate:

"I don't care who you are or what community you come from or what church you go to or anything else. I want to talk to you, have a dialogue with you, we'll have a friendly conversation about it, and I'll win the argument." - Richard Dawkins

"Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you." -8th commandment of the God Delusion


This said, I really hope this debate occurs. I think it would open up some very interesting dialogue. William Lane Craig has had some very interesting dialogues with the scholars Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan - who are Liberal Christians (Craig himself a Conservative Christian).

It will occur October 25th at 7:30 UK time.

[Eric]

WTB live stream.

[Julius Seeker]

I know they're streaming it to University campuses, I am not sure if that will be outside of the UK. Personally I'll be too busy tomorrow at the time of the debate to watch it, but I will be able to listen to the audio =)

It is bound to pop up on youtube within a couple of days.

[Julius Seeker]

Disappointingly, Richard Dawkins no-showed the event; very disappointing for someone who advertises himself as willing to take on anyone, but apparently won't take on people with good arguments against him; many have been describing this as an act of cowardice (in the atheist and theist camps alike).

Although I do recommend watching the below debate; it's not Dawkins, but probably the number 2 neo-atheist, Christopher Hitchens, a debate from a couple of years ago:




Here's the alternative event from the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford on October 25th in its entirety. Hosted by Dr. Peter Millican:



In short: William Lane Craig delivers a 40-50 minute lecture totally destroying the core arguments made in Dawkins's book "The God Delusion" followed by 24 minutes of response from three atheist Oxford professors, and a response from Craig; not particularly interesting as the professors were embarrassingly clumsy, and seemed to mostly reiterate points that Craig had already addressed and defeated earlier; it kind of reminded me of explaining multiplication to a small child, and then having the child still think 4 x 4 = 8.

[SineSwiper]

I still think atheists are just as crazy as theists. You cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no creator just as you cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a creator does exist.

But, theists have an excuse: they just don't know any better and choose to sidestep science in favor of their faith. Atheists are deeply devoted to the scientific method, yet they believe that there is no creator. It makes no sense at all.

[Don]

You can't prove the 3 laws of thermodynamics either but it doesn't stop science as from claiming these as laws. Granted in this case you can say nothing has ever been observed to contradict the laws of thermodynamics but by that token you can also say nothing has been observed to suggest the existence of a God either.

[Julius Seeker]

In the debates William Lane Craig has had, we're often seeing a clear scientific picture. He champions the Big Bang Theory and evolutionary theory; ironically, something atheists used to do against religion in the past - and still do in many cases when arguing with certain types of religious people.

For example, two arguments he uses are the Cosmological and Teleological arguments; arguments which were invalidated in the 19th century. The Big Bang Theory re-validated the Cosmological argument (the universe had a beginning and thereore had a cause) and then about 30 years ago the Teleological argument (argument that design must occur).

For the cosmological argument, he reasons why an infinite regress is no possible in light of current science - and also that the initial cause must be timeless, changeless, immaterial, and with incredible power. He goes over various abstract objects like numbers, and concludes that what we can know of which can fill the void is a God (although I have only rarely heard him go into ontology).

For the teleological argument he points out that current understanding of the early stages of the big bang has it requiring very fine tuned quantities and physical constants. That only three things can explain this: chance, physical necessity, and design. Then goes on to show that string theory predicts an only 1 in 10 to the 500th power chance that a universe which would even allow for life appearing anywhere could exist (usually no real solid matter), rulin out chance. Then that the physical constants are independent of nature ruling out physical necessity; leaving design as the only reason.

The people on the atheist side, are usually overwhelmed by his knowledge of science. Although it is not as though they do not know his arguments, they know them beforehand - they just can't stop them. It's kind of funny how you'll hear top atheists bring up an argument like "If God exists, he is omnipotent: can he create a rock that is too heavy for him to lift?"

Craig's response is usually along the lines of "I don't think that asking a logically absurd question disproves God or omnipotence." making the question appear rather silly. Then he will add "and if you'd like, perhaps God can do the logically absurd: create a rock too large for him to lift, and lift it."


In order to be a theist or an atheist, you have to imagine that humanity has adequate knowledge to even begin to find the existance of God, a greater power/mind, gods, or have reason to believe that no gods exist. Right now, deductive reasoning makes the existance of a God look almost necessary for the idea of a Big Bang universe to exist; though I think we're profoundly ignorant on such cosmic knowledge as a speies, and don't think we know enough to even begin to assign probabilities; and that is why I'm an agnostic.

[Julius Seeker]

For those who hadn't heard, Christopher Hitchens (the other major neo-atheist along with Richard Dawkins) sadly passed away of esophageal cancer a few weeks back, he is the one in the debate against William Lane Craig I posted above. While originally liberal, in his later years he turned into a very right-winged atheist who supported George W. Bush and the warfare against Islamic nations (I personally disliked his insistence that fanaticism is something limited to religion; and completely ignores the non-religious ideological fanaticism that has killed hundreds of millions and caused suffering among billions in the past 200 years,). He died an angry man as the last of the united states military forces were pulling out of Iraq for the last time during the time of his death. It is sad that he did not resolve himself in his own lifetime.


On Neo-atheism and atheism in general, I think the greatest thinker of the modern era states it best:

"I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds." "The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'—cannot hear the music of the spheres." "We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws." - Albert Einstein