manicstreetpreacher wets the appetite for his next live debate on religion.
UPDATE 03/12/2009: My afterthought piece of the debate, with video and audio links is here.
Having just about recovered from the other-worldly experience of witnessing Hitchens and Fry exact retribution on a biblical scale against the Catholic Church in London at the end of last month, I am geared up to attend my next live debate.
This time, two of Britain’s finest atheist writers, zoologist Richard Dawkins of Oxford University and philosopher A C Grayling of Birkbeck College, University of London go head-to-head against former Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, and former editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator Charles Moore to debate the topic “Is Atheism the New Fundamentalism?” The moderator is Dr Antony Seldon, Master of Wellington College.
The debate is being held at on Sunday, 29 November 2009. The doors open 6pm and the debate starts at 7pm.
Once again, Intelligence Squared is hosting the debate.
The venue is Wellington College, Berkshire:
Wellington College
Duke’s Ride
Crowthorne
Berkshire
RG45 7PU
Tel: 01344 444 000
Fax: 01344 444 002
Email: info@wellingtoncollege.org.uk
Web: www.wellingtoncollege.org.uk
Event page: http://www.wellingtoncollege.org.uk/page.aspx?id=8686
Previous form
Richard Dawkins needs no introduction! However, this is a rare public debate for him. Dawkins writes in The God Delusion that he rarely takes part in formal debates because he is not a confrontational person and feels that the adversary format is ill-suited to discover the truth. Dawkins also refuses to debate creationists because if one of them shared a platform with a prominent evolutionary biologist, it would give the lay pubic the impression that there was a serious issue worth debating! For the creationists, winning or losing the debate is irrelevant: the victory is that the debate has gone ahead at all. Dawkins has no desire to provide them with the oxygen of publicity.
However, there are still plenty of debates Dawkins has participated in that are worth investigating.
Dawkins and Grayling teamed up with the Hitch to debate against – as Dawkins later put it – three “rather half-hearted religious apologists (‘Of course I don’t believe in a God with a long white beard, but…’)” on whether “We would all be better off without religion”, the audio of which can be accessed here, or on YouTube:
You can read a review of the event by a pleasantly-surprised believing journalist, Ruth Gledhill, The Times’ religious affairs correspondent here.
Incidentally, Charles Moore, who is standing up for God on this occasion, wrote of that debate:
Although I voted against the motion both times, I think the shift of votes was justified, on the basis of the speeches. All six spoke well, but the opponents of religion were more eloquent, more passionate, more – odd though it sounds to say it – believing.
The last big debate Dawkins took part in was on 21 October 2008 at the Oxford University Museum of natural history against Oxford University mathematician and Christian John Lennox. The audio of the debate can be accessed at RichardDawkins.net here.
Dawkins and Lennox also had a closed-door conversation on religion and science earlier in the year with only a tape recorder present, the audio for which can be accessed here. As American biologist and blogwit, P Z Myers concluded:
Dawkins just probes with a few pointed questions, and Lennox, a theologian, babbles on and on and on, asserting the most amazing things. All those miracles in the bible? They literally happened – he doesn’t hide behind metaphor and poetry. Water into wine, resurrections, walking on water… it all actually happened, exactly as written, and further, he claims that all of these accounts represent historically valid evidence. This is the sophisticated theology we godless atheists are always skipping over, I guess.
Dawkins’ debate with then head of the Human Genome Project and evangelical Christian for the pages of Time magazine in 2006 is worth a read:
DAWKINS: I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine. What I can’t understand is why you invoke improbability and yet you will not admit that you’re shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God.
COLLINS: My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned by something else. God is the answer to all of those “How must it have come to be” questions.
DAWKINS: I think that’s the mother and father of all cop-outs. It’s an honest scientific quest to discover where this apparent improbability comes from. Now Dr Collins says, “Well, God did it. And God needs no explanation because God is outside all this.” Well, what an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain. Scientists don’t do that. Scientists say, “We’re working on it. We’re struggling to understand.”
Dawkins and Richard Harries had a very civilised discussion for Dawkins’ 2006 Channel 4 documentary, Root of All Evil? (Part 1 / Part 2). The full uncut interview can be viewed below:
They also debated Darwin and Christianity at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on Darwin Day 2009:
And let’s not forget that Dawkins and Harries both signed an open letter to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to protest against the head of new-fangled city academy Emmanuel College, Gateshead, after the head of the science department (!), Stephen Layfield delivered a lecture proposing that young earth creationism and flood geology be taught in science classes:
Dear Prime Minister
We write as a group of scientists and Bishops to express our concern about the teaching of science in the Emmanuel City Technology College in Gateshead. Evolution is a scientific theory of great explanatory power, able to account for a wide range of phenomena in a number of disciplines. It can be refined, confirmed and even radically altered by attention to evidence. It is not, as spokesmen for the college maintain, a ‘faith position’ in the same category as the biblical account of creation which has a different function and purpose.
The issue goes wider than what is currently being taught in one college. There is a growing anxiety about what will be taught and how it will be taught in the new generation of proposed faith schools. We believe that the curricula in such schools, as well as that of Emmanuel City Technical College, need to be strictly monitored in order that the respective disciplines of science and religious studies are properly respected.
Yours sincerely
The Right Reverend Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford
Sir David Attenborough, FRS
The Right Reverend Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St Albans
Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society
Professor John Enderby, FRS, Physical Secretary, Royal Society
The Right Reverend John Oliver, Bishop of Hereford
The Right Reverend Mark Santer, Bishop of Birmingham
Sir Neil Chalmers, Director, Natural History Museum
The Right Reverend Thomas Butler, Bishop of Southwark
Sir Martin Rees, FRS, Astronomer Royal
The Right Reverend Kenneth Stevenson, Bishop of Portsmouth
Professor Patrick Bateson, FRS, Biological Secretary, Royal Society
The Right Reverend Crispian Hollis, Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth
Sir Richard Southwood, FRS, Past Biological Secretary, Royal Society
Sir Francis Graham-Smith, FRS, Past Physical Secretary, Royal Society
Professor Richard Dawkins, FRS
Aside from that, Dawkins had a public discussion at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival in 2007 with Anglican theologian Alistair McGrath following the publication of The God Delusion and McGrath’s reply (if that’s the right word for it), The Dawkins Delusion? (McGrath’s effort is terrible, even by the low standards of the “fleas”. Paula Kirby does the book justice in her “Fleabytes” review of four Christian responses to The God Delusion.)
However, the real treat is Dawkins’ full uncut interview with McGrath for Root of All Evil?
None of the footage was used in the final version of the programme. McGrath claimed it was because he had landed several blows on Dawkins and made him “appear uncomfortable”. My theory is that the producers were concerned for the well-being of viewers who might be operating heavy machinery while watching it. McGrath is horrendously boring and babbles incomprehensibly. One blogger at RD.net summed up his style thus:
A fly on the wall in the McGrath household:
MRS McGRATH: What would you like for dinner, dear?
MR McGRATH: Well, if I can just come back on that actually, I think you’ve raised a very interesting point, pivotal to the way this discussion should continue. This is certainly something that needs to be engaged with and explored further. It seems to me that there are areas we can push into here that can challenge us and I welcome that. When I was an atheist, these on-going philosophical subjects were subject to different interpretations and perspectives so, suffice to say, the Christian faith has fortified me and others to take all of these very very very interesting points into account and offer an explanation such as this: Egg and chips will be fine, love.
MRS McGRATH: I’m leaving you.
Nevertheless, try and stay awake because Dawkins uses his wonderful brand of pithy sarcasm, to which McGrath is seemingly oblivious. And the knock-out punch comes at 45 minutes when Dawkins nails him whether God intervened to save one child in a tsunami that claimed the lives of thousands. As one blogger commenting on the interview’s entry on RD.net put it:
For 45 minutes it’s a gentle game of ping pong and then when it comes to the issue god and suffering McGrath’s arms get tired and Dawkins switches to a tennis racket. At 50 minutes McGrath is undone.
Magic!
A C Grayling is a slightly less-known quantity to me. I have read a few of his books and seen some of his debates and lectures and can recommend the following to whet your appetites.
Against All Gods is Grayling’s contribution to the New Atheism. It is brief – more of a pamphlet than a book – but there are some real gems in it. Of particular interest to the topic at hand is Grayling’s rubbishing the concept of “atheist fundamentalism” by asking what a non-fundamentalist atheist is: someone who sort of doesn’t, but not quite not believes in God?! Grayling also predicts that far from seeing a resurgence of religion, we are actually witnessing its death-throes; a violent convulsion before it’s gone for good.
Grayling is a champion of the enlightenment and wrote Towards the Light in celebration of rationalism’s conquest over dogma. Be sure to read his hilarious exchanges with wedge-driving ID hack from the ironically-named Discovery Institute, Steve Fuller over Grayling’s damning review of Fuller’s Dissent Over Descent. Grayling’s reply to Fuller’s indignant response to his review contained this all-time classic which I have quoted myself on at least one occasion:
Steve Fuller complains, as do all authors whose books are panned, that I did not read his book properly (or at all). Alas, I did.
Grayling’s appearance at Beyond Belief 2008 on Human Flourishing and Eudaimonics is also worth watching:
Although it has nothing to do with religion, Grayling’s discussion with Christopher Hitchens on the moral implication of the Allies’ devastating bombing campaign against civilians of the Axis powers during World War II at the Goethe-Institut, Washington in 2006 following the publication of Grayling’s Among The Dead Cities is a real treat. It’s on YouTube in 11 parts or you can watch it on FORA.tv and C-Span.
Predictions for this one
Unlike the rhetorical slaughter by Hitchens and Fry of the Vatican, which I predicted in advance of the actual event, I feel that this one will be too close to call. Probably both sides will come away claiming victory. Dawkins and Grayling are far more cordial and polite in comparison to Hitchens’ bull-in-a-china-shop/ take-no-prisoners approach at the lectern.
However, I hope that the two heretics will push the point that atheists are offended by what they read in the holy books of the world’s religions and how this is put into practice all too literally by millions of believers the world over, whether it be indoctrinating their children into thinking that their non-Catholic/Protestant/Muslim/Jewish [delete as applicable] friends will suffer an eternity in hellfire, to ploughing millions dollars every year into spreading creationism – money that would be far better spent on potentially life-saving scientific research – or flying aeroplanes into skyscrapers.
I know what these books say because I’ve read them. Why should we respect the utterly ridiculous claim that they could only have been authored by an omnipotent deity? Why shouldn’t we get angry when such ideas are granted special privilege in public discourse?
The idea that we must automatically “respect” other people’s ideas is complete nonsense. It is a special favour granted only to religious faith. In every other area of conversation we most certainly do not respect people’s views and opinions. If one member of the panel wanted to promulgate their honest, sincere, faith-based claim that the Holocaust never happened, that National Socialism was the only proper form of government, or even something less sinister such as Elvis was still alive, is that a view that the audience would “respect”? Of course not!
In every other conversational topic we demand good reasons. We demand evidence. Reason and evidence really are contagious. If you give good reasons, people will accept your claims as they accept the colour of your hair. Religious faith is a reason not to give reasons. It is a conversation stopper. Even if the New Atheists are completely wrong about the existence of God and the negative effects of religion upon society, they have at the very least helped moved religious faith into the same sphere.
Perhaps into ten years time whenever someone opens their mouth or puts pen to paper in criticism of religion, this will be accepted as if they had criticised a political ideology as opposed the hysterical responses of the present day where theists and atheists alike rush to publish books and articles denouncing the “shrillness” and “stridency” of those brave few who dare speak out.
At the very least, I hope I get the chance to thank Dawkins for his very kind comment that I was “most certainly not boring” during my appearance on Premier’s Christian Radio’s religious sceptics’ debate show Unbelievable? with author of The Dawkins Letters (another “flea” response to The God Delusion), Pastor David Robertson and former-atheist-converted-to-Christianity, Richard Morgan.
manicstreetpreacher 