manicstreetpreacher hopes that this old chestnut can finally be put to rest.
Further to my report on the Intelligence Squared debate at Wellington College on 29 November 2009, someone has edited together a YouTube clip of Richard Dawkins being asked why he refuses to debate William Lane Craig with Dawkins replying that it takes more to persuade him to share a platform with someone than that person just being a “professional debater” and he is “busy”:
Well done, Richard! I have already given my thoughts here and here on Craig being a complete hack whose five “arguments” have been corrected repeatedly, yet he still continues to use them. The only aim of the apologists is for Craig to use every dirty trick in his arsenal to make Dawkins look silly and thereby discredit the man rather than having to face the burden of actually answering his arguments. As John W Luftus over at Debunking Christianity puts it:
Debates are like boxing matches. No intelligent person thinks that the issues are solved depending on who wins a debate. No one. But debates are entertaining and educational. The debaters are sparring, yes. We like to watch them. They want to win. We want our man (or woman) to win for our side. But they are like boxing matches. And Dawkins is the leading atheist in our generation. So Christians are acting just like the supremacists did back in Jack Johnson’s day. “Knock Dawkins out,” they’re saying. “Embarrass him.” “Show the world our Christian man is better than your atheist man.” “They’re a minority and so let’s keep them in their place.” In Johnson’s day it was a fight between the races. This is a fight between skepticism and faith.
Craig has a totally arrogant, patronising and belittling style at the lectern whose only desire is to make fools out of his opponents, as this clip from his 1998 debate with Peter Atkins (YouTube Part 1) attests:
The clip demonstrates most of Craig’s underhand tactics: dropping in too many points than his opponent can possibly answer in the time allowed, straw-manning said opponents’ arguments, gross scientific distortions (he’s dead wrong about the Special Theory of Relativity’s assumption of the speed of light; while we cannot observe it directly going at a constant from A to B, we can make many different predictions about what would happen if that were the case, and verify them which is how we know it’s true), placing the burden of proof on his opponent when he is the one making the claim, discrediting the scientific method (but only when it suits him) without providing any positive arguments as to how faith answers these questions any better and generally being a condescending tool to some of the world’s most respected academics.
Late conservative commentator William F Buckley Jnr being an utterly biased moderator doesn’t help, but Craig doesn’t actually humiliate Atkins at all. Like most of Craig’s opponents, Atkins is clearly dumbfounded by the idiocy of the man in front of him!
But even with such a wealth of dishonest tricks up his sleeve, Craig is very beatable as long as his opponent has done their homework (which, alas only a select few atheists bother to do!) and present positive reasons to reject belief in God.
I recommend watching and listening to Craig’s debate against Victor Stenger at University of Hawaii in 2003 for a clinical annihilation of his arguments for the existence of God (the video cuts out after first rebuttals, but Stenger comes out with some gems during cross-examination, closing statements and the audience Q & A). Bart Ehrman thoroughly debunked Craig’s arguments on the historical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection, of which you can read the transcript while while watching or listening to the tape.
Tags: A C Grayling, Atheism is the new fundamentalism, bart ehrman, Charles Moore, debate, God The Failed Hypothesis, Has Science Found God, Intelligence Squared, Kalam Cosmological Argument, Misquoting Jesus, Peter Atkins, reasonable faith, richard dawkins, Richard Harries, the god delusion, victor stenger, Wellington College, William Lane Craig
manicstreetpreacher 
13/12/2009 at 18:39 |
Shortly after publishing this piece, I came across this comment by Dawkins posted on the debate forum at RichardDawkins.net, courtesy of Steven Carr:
I have of course previously blogged on Craig’s shocking views on the God-ordered massacres of the Old Testament here, but Dawkins’ comment just about says it all.
MSP
16/12/2009 at 04:26 |
I’m glad to see my video has made its way onto quite a few blogging sites now.
Your commentary aside, Dr. Dawkins is still wrong. Craig is not just a professional debater. He has more academic fame and firepower to his name than any other theist Dawkins has debated, including John Lennox (whom he has debated twice) and Alistair McGrath. That point seems to be overlooked by most people responding to the video.
16/12/2009 at 09:19 |
Thanks for splicing the piece together and uploading it to YouTube, good work!
I think Craig’s fame springs from his public speaking rather than his books. It was certainly how I first came across him. His books play second fiddle. As Bart Ehrman said in his closing remarks in their debate, he is an evangelist masquerading as a scholar and an historian who wants his audience to follow Christ.
Craig’s arguments for God’s existence are so lame that they are easily debunked in themselves; however, he is such a slippery character for the reasons I mentioned in my post that he runs rings around his opponents by constantly moving the goalposts and dropping in more points than can be answered. That is showmanship, not scholarship.
Dawkins could debate far more people than he actually does. However, he says in The God Delusion that he’s not a confrontational person by nature and if you read this article, he explains that he has a rule against debating creationists because they only want to share a platform with a prominent evolutionary scientist to make it appear to the lay public that there is a serious issue (i.e. the validity of evolution) actually worth debating. Winning or losing the debate itself is irrelevant to the creationists: the victory is the fact that the debate has gone ahead at all.
MSP
16/12/2009 at 13:09 |
Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984).
He’s also the author of 30 books…just a professional debater I guess then lol!
16/12/2009 at 14:07 |
Theology’s contribution to the destruction of the rainforests and climate change continues.
16/12/2009 at 20:39 |
I wonder why Craig doesn’t “destroy” Dawkins with the written word.
Mind you, he would have to try harder than the libellous video attacking Dawkins’ views on child abuse in chapter nine of the God Delusion.
I wonder. What would Craig do if he were to discover that his Muslim neighbour had sliced off the clitoris of his (the Muslim neighbour) daughter?
Seemingly, for Craig seems to be against state intervention in matters of child abuse, Craig would just say “Oh, what the heck do I care about child abuse of Muslim children?”
16/12/2009 at 21:55 |
Many thanks for your post Galactor. I was not aware of Craig’s smear campaign against Dawkins for his views on giving children a religious upbringing.
Here is the potentially libellous video in full from one “drcraigvideos”:
Here is a handy response from another YouTube user:
And here’s Dawkins’ response to the video on the RD.net forum:
Just when I thought that my opinion of WLC couldn’t possibly get any lower.
Never mind scraping the bottom of the barrel, we’ve removed the base entirely from the mo-fo and are tunnelling straight for Oz!
MSP
27/12/2009 at 09:55 |
William Lane Craig would argue the moon is made of green cheese and win. Regrettable people like William Lane Craig will never develop the technology to actually prove the moon is made from green cheese.
I don’t know all the “who ha” regarding Craig. The debates always seem to fall in Craig’s home court. “Is there a God? or “What is the nature of evil?” or some other similar rubbish. Craig has never written a paper on cosmology, astronomy, physics, etc, so his views in these areas are moot.
Should Victor Stenger start debating Astrologers too?
19/07/2010 at 14:19 |
I don’t understand how can an evangelical “scholar” like Craig who preaches Biblical innerancy at Talbot could even pretend to objectively evaluate the Gospels as historical dociments. I mean, he already presupposes that they are! It seems to me that for someone like Craig to call himself a historian doing an objective evaluation of the gospels is just blatant hypocrisy. So I’m wondering: Does any non-evangelical NT historian take evalgelical NT “scholars” seriously? Is Craig’s “work” reffered to by any reputable NT historian/scholar? And what about his claim that there’s a consensus concerning the “facts” he presents?- is it ture or is it just another case of his dishonesty?
31/07/2010 at 12:35 |
I would like Richard Dawkins to take up Dr Kent Hovind’s challenge.
Dr Kent Hovind as I recall offerd $150,000 if someone would debate him on Creation and the Flood versus Evolution.
This would not be a slanging match. Dr Kent Hovind has very credible answers for why things are the way they are and for which Evolution has not answer.
Evolution is taught as a Religion and is not based on science. If it is based on science then it is bad science.
Don’t stay deaf and blind to the Truth.
The frustration is that Evolution is blindly accepted by the masses just because they do not want to hear the truth that makes them responsible.
The tragedy is they are missing out on the greatest promise ever made and the priceless gift they can ever receive and for what?
There is a general teaching in trading if you want to win and that is not follow the herd but be a contrarian. Following Evolution blindly without knowing how to win the argument is following the blind and as to quote a well know book out of context but you get the meaning they are like sheep going to the slaughter.
31/07/2010 at 13:03 |
On the question and teaching of children, the teachers of evolution who brainwash children are equally as culpable as so called Christian religions for not teaching the truth about Jesus or God.
The words of Jesus are both truthful and inoffensive and have the hallmark of true authority. No one should force children to believe in this or that religion. The child can be told and left to make their own minds up when they are old enough. This is what the Bible teaches believe it or not.
The actual words of Jesus should be the defining words on this point. Jesus is not forcing children to come to him, but he warns against those who prevent them.
The truth of God’s Word is so simple as to be understood by a child and yet adults grow to believe in lies. To deny children from finding out the Truth and denying them the gift of the Kingdom of God and what that entails is an absolute crime and Jesus is right to pronounce a judgement on those who do.
Those who teach children must surely have the child’s interest at heart instead of self-interest aiming to score points for conversions. I want to let Jesus have the last word for this is what his followers must teach and must allow children to find out the Truth.
Matthew chapter 18:
And (Jesus)said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
7 Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
31/07/2010 at 16:58 |
@David Monk
Read this article as to why Dawkins will not debate creationists.
It would be like Stephen Hawking arguing with the head of the Flat Earth Society on the shape of the globe or Martin Gilbert sharing a platform with David Irving on the historicity of the Holocaust.
The lay public would be given the erroneous impression that there was an argument to be had at all.
As for your assertion that evolution is as much a position of faith as religion, Dawkins concluded his exchange of correspondence with a creationist-baiter by stating:
01/08/2010 at 01:22 |
I do not believe you can prove scientifically Evolution or Creation. Based on probabilities I would say that Creation is more probable than than Evolution. Just the fact that you have to have so many things coming together and so much co-dependence that a slow evolution means that plants and animals that need each other to survive could never have taken place slowly.
I know that is not a proof, but for the Big Bang and Evolution to take place we are asked to believe that so many improbabilities took place that the improbability seems greater than that of Creation.
For example I listened to one scientist say that they cannot explain how carbon atoms form. It is extremely difficult for carbon atoms to form and yet we are a carbon life-form. How was the earth formed as it is and how is it that it has a mass of iron as its core in order to provide the right mass to provide the gravity essential for life and the earth is the correct distance from the Sun for life to be sustained an how do you account for the moon being the size it is and the orbit it takes around the earth.
These are just a few of the many probabilities that all had to take place for life to exist that it is a virtual impossibility for it to have happened without a power to make it happen.
Just as you cannot prove Evolution you cannot scientifically prove God. However, God has not left us without evidence that he exists. You may determine that by the very things you see which reveal the hand of a great designer and there again this is not proof.
The only way God can be proved is the by the way God shows us the proof. God asks this question; “who can tell a thing before it happens?”
It is one thing to look back to the past as Creation and Evolution do, but what about telling the future. Scientists cannot say for certain what will happen tomorrow or next week or next year. Yet God has put on record in His Word recorded as He inspired men to write what would happen in the future. There is just too much too prophecy or telling the future to go into here.
One of the greatest events on earth was the
01/08/2010 at 16:24 |
This argument from “improbability” ruling out natural events in favour of unproven supernatural alternatives is entirely fallacious. It’s no use ruling out natural events on the arbitrary notion of low probability. You have to compare it with the probability of the alternative you contend is more likely.
What’s the probability that the laws of nature are violated? What’s the probability that an invisible and undetectable designer – natural or supernatural – created it? I’ve never heard a creationist or “design theorist” answer these questions. Perhaps the improbability of design is even greater. What data do the theologians have to make the calculation? None I would say, because there is no evidence of a designer whatsoever.
This reasoning also fails on the basis that low probability events happen all the time. If you crunch the numbers in relation to your own birth (i.e. the probability that a particular sperm united with a particular egg multiplied by the probability that your parents met and repeated the calculation back until the beginning of time), you will get a fantastically low probability.
Theistic evolutionary scientist Francisco Ayala reinforced the point during his debate against Christian apologist William Lane Craig on whether Intelligent Design was a viable alternative to evolution. Ayala remarked that there’s no need to argue against probability scare-mongers like William Dembski, because their very existence on this Earth is so mind-bendingly improbable that they were never born!
01/08/2010 at 01:47 |
(continued)
One of the greatest miracles was the birth death and resurrection of Jesus which was all foretold centuries before it took place. You can read in the Book of Psalm written centuries before the birth of Jesus how he would be crucified. This was centuries before Crucifixion was known about and which was brought about in the time of the Roman Empire.
God put down on record many, many things concerning the future centuries before the events took place and it is that which proves God exists for again “who can tell you a thing before it happens”? With so much proof then I have the assurance that all the future events which God has revealed to us in His Word will take place.
I heard it said a long time ago that he you can make the atom controls the world or that he who can change the weather controls the world. Neither of these two things will man ever be able to do. To thinks so is pie in the sky to the extreme.
If God can make one atom, he can make an infinite number and if He can make and infinite number then all things are possible. God can make the carbon atom whereas the carbon atom to form on its own from hydrogen atoms is a near impossibility and yet you have to have a trillion times a trillion near impossibilities to happen and that is just for the carbon atoms to form let alone the complex molecule that is dna which forms the building blocks of life.
I have to go on the fact that we have recorded the proof that God exists and that He alone can say what will happen in the future and who has the power to bring it about. With God in control we can be assured of a future whereas so easily if man is left to his own devices he will destroy his environment and himself. This is exactly as God has said it would happen unless He intervenes and He will, so whatever people want to think, it does not matter for God will be proved right in the end to those who believe.
01/08/2010 at 16:24 |
“You can read in the Book of Psalm written centuries before the birth of Jesus how he would be crucified. This was centuries before Crucifixion was known about and which was brought about in the time of the Roman Empire.”
You don’t think there is even the slightest chance that those New Testament books were written deliberately to confirm the Old Testament “prophesies”?
There is no evidence outside the Bible that these predictions were made or the later events occurred. So before making the extraordinary claim that something supernatural occurred, a much simpler explanation is that the stories are a fiction, written so as to conform to earlier writings.
Debates over the reliability of the New Testament documents will never be settled until Christianity goes the same way as the Viking gods. However, the NT makes the very specific prediction that Christ will return trailing clouds of glory in order to establish God’s Holy Kingdom on Earth… within the lifetime of his followers.
Two thousand years have passed and we are still waiting. It’s time to give up and move on.
29/08/2010 at 00:34 |
“However, the NT makes the very specific prediction that Christ will return trailing clouds of glory in order to establish God’s Holy Kingdom on Earth… within the lifetime of his followers.”
You are pedalling a lie like so many who do not want to try and understand the Truth. Jesus did not say he would return in the lifetime of his followers. Jesus told of how some of his followers would even die.
More importantly, Jesus did not know when he would be sent back. He said this;
Matthew 24v36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
The apostle Peter writes this:
1 Peter 2 v3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
5 For this they willingly are ignorant
Alas you are willing ignorant of the Truth that is contained in the Bible. If you keep on misquoting and taking verses out of context, then you are deliberately spreading lies.
29/08/2010 at 13:04 |
OUT OF CONTEXT!!!!
Heard it all before. I’m sorry, David, it’s not going to persuade me the umpteenth and first time.
As an atheist I get asked what evidence I would accept for the existence of God and the truth of one religion over all others.
As far as Christianity is concerned, I think you guys would be on much firmer ground if JC had come flying out of the clouds trailing clouds of glory when he said he would repeatedly in all four of the Gospels(!) to judge the human race for its sexual indiscretions.
I notice you haven’t responded to my charges regarding the lack of evidence outside the Bible for fulfilled prophesies. I’ll leave you with a passage from Victor Stenger’s excellent God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, which is the last word on the subject:
A general observation from me it that the world has been predicted to end so many times by so many scriptures, prophets and sages, that as a matter of simple probability one of them should have been right by now. Even in the last century we have had so many near apocalypses with two World Wars, the dropping of the Atomic bomb, the Cold War, Vietnam and various natural disasters like the 2004 Asian Tsunami. Yet we are still here and Jesus is not.
Guys and girls, may be the Bible is wrong?
12/09/2010 at 01:35 |
Why not just denounce WLC and Alvin Plantinga as the hacks they are! They ever spout jejune sophisticated, solecistic sophistry!
The Buy-bull [Bye-bull] and its Sky Pappy are both evil.
18/10/2010 at 05:27 |
dawkins did implie that children should be taken away from there parents idiot.
18/10/2010 at 21:17 |
No he did not.
And it’s “imply” and “their”, idiot.
21/02/2011 at 21:30 |
[…] Dawkins has famously refused to debate William Lane Craig, though he does have criteria for who he will debate. However … this just in … apparently Dawkins and Craig have ended up in debate, […]
09/07/2011 at 06:03 |
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Those accusing Dr. Lane Craig for trickery in his debates are admitting they have no good answers to his arguments. No wonder Dawkins stays hidden away in his pseudo-intelligence mind-set.
James
09/07/2011 at 19:22 |
Dr Craig’s very “arguments” are a form of debate trickery.
He states in black and white in Reasonable Faith that the “inner witness of the Holy Spirit” is all the reassurance of the truth of Christianity that a person needs and whereas argument and evidence can be used to support it, they cannot legitimately overrule it.
Translation: “Heads I win. Tails you lose.”
The very definition of a fundamentalist is someone who will not change their mind regardless of the evidence against their position.
Dawkins and Grayling are doing well to stay clear of such a pseudo-intellectual.
21/05/2012 at 04:10 |
” The very definition of a fundamentalist is someone who will not change their minds…” That about sums up New Atheists of our present day! Jim
16/10/2012 at 06:51 |
“The very definition of a fundamentalist is someone who will not change their mind regardless of the evidence against their position.” Having read quit a few posts, as well as comments and replies, I can only conclude the author of this blog is a fundamentalist of some kind.
16/10/2012 at 18:48 |
Not at all, Hubrisless
Here is my stock list of examples of evidence that would definitely make me re-consider my non-belief in God:
If one type of prayer were convincingly demonstrated to work better than another type. For instance, if the efficacy of prayers said by Christians were consistently significantly greater than that of prayers said by Muslims or pagans, or people who just keep their fingers crossed. Or if any kind of prayer were shown to have a consistent, significant effect. Or if a single prayer achieved something truly extraordinary, something which simply could not be otherwise explained: see re-growth of errant limbs referred to above.
If a new planet were to appear (as opposed to just being seen for the first time thanks to better instruments, for instance) in the solar system. This would violate the law of energy conservation and could only have a non-natural cause.
If evidence were to emerge that the universe must have begun in a high state of order, necessarily imposed from outside.
If the Bible had contained some specific information about the world which was unknown to science at the time of the “revelation” but which was later confirmed by observation. If it contained successful predictions of specific events in our own time that could have no plausible alternate explanation (not just vague allusions to suffering/ evil/ upheaval).
If someone undergoing a religious experience subsequently had new, verifiable knowledge that could not have been gained by other means. Not the usual stuff about how we should all love one another and watch our cholesterol, but something specific such as someone in the 20th century specifically knowing that on 26 December 2004 a tsunami in the Indian Ocean would kill hundreds of thousands of people. We just couldn’t account for such prescience other than by the existence of something outside the material world.
If Jesus returned to Earth trailing clouds of glory to judge the living and the dead and generally bring about God’s Holy Kingdom when he said he would – Matthew 16 and 24.
If some of the massive events of the Old Testament and the surrounding characters where confirmed by modern archaeological research. However, “minimalist” scholars such as William Dever and Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman have written off the patriarchs, the Egyptian captivity, the exodus, the wandering and the conquest of Canaan as myths on a par with King Arthur plucking Excalibur from the grasp of The Lady of the Lake for want of archaeological evidence despite concerted efforts. Geographers can’t even figure which peak is Mount Sinai!
I look forward to your reasons as to why those objections are not valid and why God does not choose to fulfill my criteria.
MSP
22/08/2013 at 17:51 |
[…] blog reports had us believe, Hitchens simply did not prepare to take on “professional debater” (© Richard Dawkins) Craig and wanted to debate whether religion was good for the world, as opposed to the actual topic […]
02/09/2013 at 09:45 |
[…] Lane Craig at Intelligence Squared’s debate on atheist fundamentalism a few weeks later. Dawkins’ reply was not much more respectful: he made clear that he thought Craig was a “professional debater” […]
30/09/2013 at 16:15 |
[…] most angry Dawkins has been towards an opponent is calling Christian apologist William Lane Craig a “professional debater” and subsequently “an apologist for genocide”, both of which mere statements of fact as opposed […]
12/12/2014 at 13:35 |
I feel ashamed to say that my friends attack Craig like a bunch of wayward children attack an unlikable teacher. Why don’t we grow up and face the music. Craig is good with both the spoken and written word. It’s just that our boys can’t beat him. We don’t have the material or personal ability to beat him. I wonder if he really does have something to say after all–and we can’t admit it? James