Dawkins why i wont debate craig

Ignorance of the arguments for theism fits the Dawkins profile. And ignorance of William Lane Craig is inexcusable if Dawkins want to consider himself an authority in Philosophy of Religion. It would actually be the opposite. Dawkins would have to to very well prepared indeed, and on his best behaviour, to come out unscathed. And if he debates Christians he already debates creationists, so even his answer is confused on the issue.

What do you do sir? I think this quote aptly fits both Young Earth Creationists and diehard Atheists when it comes to their refusal to consider evidence which opposes their own pet paradigm. I think a debate between these two would be fruitless. Craig always takes care to address his opponents arguments.

And I think seeing Dawkins utterly debunked would be quite satisfying. Which are….. I find this simpleton comment disappointing. If so, what do you make of this? And can you bear to admit that there are good arguments against your worldview? I can bear the fact that there are arguments, but none I think are successful. Plus it would be quite an impressive accomplishment, not only to strip down all the arguments of Natural Theology but also to erect successful arguments for atheism.

I can understand someone else, say an atheist, seeing a debate where I thought the Christian won the debate, and the atheist attendee thought their champion won the day. Debates come down to who has the better arguments and counter-arguments and, to put it simply and clearly, Theism has the better arguments and counter-arguments, and atheism does not.

I have to say I quite like Craig and I think many of his arguments entirely valid. It shows you are blinkered by your worldview. Third, why should the idea that there is no scientific evidence for God matter to you? Do you expect there to be, given the concept of God? Yes I would accuse you of the same. Because how reasonable we think an argument is depends on where we want to see evidence.

Or do you disagree with the reasonableness of this argument! I do expect there to be scientific evidence for god because that is the benchmark; the standard we use for everything else. In any case I think that there are many arguments for god which make sense and are good arguments. Certainly I think I can rationally counter most of them, but they are still arguments with some merit. For instance, the Kalam argument has merit if you are happy with a first cause or a self-extant being.

The design argument has merit because things are so complicated. Admittedly it has lost its edge with evolution, but it still has merit. The moral argument for god is far simpler than a natural argument and that is a plus. And the grounding of knowledge is a far simpler affair using a god to base it upon.

All of these arguments have merit and I am quite happy to admit that even while, of course, I can find problems with them. But I do not see this from you Stuart. I think you are afraid of acknowledging even the slightest validity in areas which you see as a potential threat. And, well, I think that a worldview which is so fearful is heading in the wrong direction.

I think that the worldviews most worthy of respect are not ones that are nervously guarding their logical justifications, but ones which are free of fear enough to acknowledge validity wherever it lies — even if in opposing worldviews.

The MAJOR problem with your response then is, that reasonableness — or that which accords to the rules of inference, and is thus right-thinking — is not subject to personal interpretations. Okay, so how about scientific evidence for god? That is something I think we disagree on. I think God should be visible to science, and I assume you think otherwise. We both have reasons. In other words, Naturalism and Materialism declare that intuition and other transcendences cannot exist, yet the basis for Naturalism and Materialism is itself necessarily intuitive and transcendent.

So Naturalism and Materialism deny their own foundational validity, and thus are paradoxical violate the Principle of Non-Contradiction , and so are neither coherent nor valid. This paradox is fatal, rationally speaking, for Naturalism and Materialism, but not for Empiricism, because Empiricism has voluntarily chosen to limit its range of investigation, and, in theory any way, does not say anything at all about transcendences or about value systems, except that they are out of the range of the testability and verification constraints placed upon Empirical processes.

Empiricism is a process, not a worldview or value system. In this manner Empiricism retains its validity as a process for obtaining information about physical reality.

Naturalism and Materialism are seen to be invalid, non-coherent worldviews, spun off from Empiricism, but no longer identical to it. Witness comment 17 December at pm. Who says that naturalism and materialism declare that intuition cannot exist? I think that we can arrive at naturalsim while fully observing our intuition in operation. I just had an idea. I think that the appropriate match is Daniel Dennett vs. Lane Craig. People here seem to think that Craig demolishes Dawkins, but this is because Dawkins is not arguing at the philosophical level NOT that I advocate that the philosophical level is somehow better.

Craig is, and so I think Dennett is the appropriate adversary, as he is a philosopher. It seems to me that my observation still stands — that Craig always takes care to address his opponents arguments. The video does not disprove that observation, or even contradict it. See here.

The first thing that sprang to mind is Dennett has debated Craig. But as far a I can tell Craig has only responded in a 45 min talk to a dialogue between McGrath and Dennett in , and Dennett responded to Craig in ten minutes.

This I have listened to and the response of Dennett was admittedly brief and woefully dismissive. Apropos Dennett in debate; he has taken on Plantinga where I hear he was demolished quite thoroughly. I just think they argue for their story making more sense.

I think that video shows this exactly. I smile at your thinking that what matters to you are the arguments themselves. This is defensive language; language of fear. I think you are afraid to engage with this fact. I think you are embarrased by it. Spirituality is firstly — or only even — about emotional health and openness; emancipation and redemption. And that, therefore, logic is not so sound at all.

But I also think that you are pre-disposed towards conclusions as well — conclusions that happen to be opposing to the beliefs I hold. So what we need is something to arbitrate. Despite its self-congratulatory tone, The God Delusion contains no original arguments for atheism. Summarising what he calls "the central argument of my book", Dawkins insists that even without an entirely convincing explanation for the fine-tuning in physics, the "relatively weak" explanations we have at present are clearly better than "the self-defeating … hypothesis of an intelligent designer".

Dawkins maintains that we're not justified in inferring a designer as the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe because then a new problem surfaces: who designed the designer? This argument is as old as the hills and as any reasonably competent first-year undergraduate could point out is patently invalid. For an explanation to be successful we do not need an explanation of the explanation.

One might as well say that evolution by natural selection explains nothing because it does nothing to explain why there were living organisms on earth in the first place; or that the big bang fails to explain the cosmic background radiation because the big bang is itself inexplicable.

What is new is the belittling posture toward religious believers and the fury of the polemics. The New Atheism is certainly a far cry from the model of civilised interlocution between "old atheist" Bertrand Russell and Father Copleston that took place and was broadcast on BBC Radio in The New Atheists could learn a lot from the likes of Russell, whose altogether more powerful approach was at once respectful and a model of philosophical precision.

In his latest undignified rant , Dawkins claims that it is because Craig is "an apologist for genocide" that he won't share a platform with him. Dawkins is referring to Craig's defence of God's commandment in Deuteronomy to wipe out the Canannites. Public debates are a form of entertainment rather than academic inquiry.

They favor the skilled debater and Craig is, if nothing else, a very skilled and experienced debater. If anyone actually wants to see Craig given a run for his money they should look up his debates with Christopher Hitchens on YouTube. Yes, seversky, it would be very entertaining watching Dawkins get caught in lie after lie.

He definitely never presented any science or evidence to support his position. Dawkins was truly laughable. Never mind that they were often already crawling with maggots, when taken to the loving refuge and basic nursing services provided by her nuns.

Actually a generous admission: a skilled debater is a skilled thinker. Which the typical a-mat would never admit about Christian Darwin skeptics. It is very telling that no one can say how to test the claims of blind watchmaker evolution. And it is very telling that peer-review is devoid of anything written that would support it.