So I stumbled upon the fact that William Craig and others debated Richard Dawkins and others recently. David Wolpe and Micheal Shermer are there as well as two other guys I didn't know.

Looks like it should be fun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IeHqj3Fu-Y

Puede ser interesante si entiendes espanol, pero el presentador no habla en ingles. (If you only know English, might want to skip to the 5 minute mark where the participants introduce themselves. First 5 minutes is just the host speaking in Spanish.)

watching now..

"I want to begin with a joke." If your demeanor is that stiff and scholarly, I would say no, you don't want to begin with a joke.

Same nonsense from Craig... ehhhh... these debates are coming very boring...

I thought the producer's production of the debate was all the joke needed. It was like a debate produced by Comedy Central crossed with the producer's of Mexican Soaps.

I'm mainly puzzled by the lack of clowns paraded around on stage before the actual debate began.

yeah, and after every point someone yelling GOAAAL!

Pretty much. It's become rather clear to me that Craig purposely tries to speak in almost an entirely different language than his opponents and generally tries for a very high degree of abstraction so you forget that he has almost no basis for most of his claims, and that he's way out of his depth on most of the scientific particulars.

Dawkins on the other hand is very good at the particulars of science, but he doesn't really give the one-two philosophical punch that would end most of these debates. Tip: don't cede the "conflicting worlds" narrative, because the religious/creation/ID side is way better at manipulating the dialogue in those terms than you are.

I like Craig's "god exists because evil exists" logic.

He almost had me on it for a moment.

For those that won't listen, the gist is (assuming I remember correctly from just a couple of hours ago):

1. Evil is acting in a way counter to how things ought to be.
2. If there's a way things ought to be, that implies a purpose to existence.
3. If there's a purpose to the universe, then God exists (he expanded on this point earlier or later or something).

Since evil exists, we have 1, 2, and 3 and so God exists. Of course, 1 and 3 aren't as clear-cut as he'd like (I'll grant him 2), but he did at least make it sound nice.

Yes, just define a word arbitrarily. Then use that define as proof. Brilliant.

Sounds like Craig. His words really make you swoon, until you put everything together and realize he's full of crap.

Glad you found it - here's WLC's report on the "debate":

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/...rticle&id=8499


Just got his December newsletter - he's debating Sam Harris at Notre Dame on 4/7 and Lawrence Krauss on 3/30.

Edit: Almost forgot, he also addressed the Mexico thing in a Question of the Week:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/...rticle&id=8515

dingdingding

If equivocation were removed from the apologist's arsenal they would be laughed off stage every time.

May I ask what the atheists think of the atheists side of this debate? I have just made it through Dawkins opening speech so I still have a lot to go, but will all the hate on the theists side (which I expected) I am curious to hear if people think that Dawkins and Shermer (and the other guy) are doing a good job.

Thanks for the links. I will take a look when I get a chance.

Those two debates should be very interesting. I am mostly intrigued by the Krauss debate. I think that debate should be very telling of where both the theist and atheist really stands on the KCA. There will be no hiding for either Craig or Krauss in that debate.

I only listened to some arguments, and some of them were pretty weak. But the arguments from the theists side were just ridiculous...

I watched the whole debate and I was overall satisfied with how the atheists did. There were a few things I didn't like, however.

They had to explicitly disagree with the "two contentions" of Craig in the beginning (if there is no god, there is no purpose, if there is god, there is purpose). While the former may be true, the latter is very far from obvious. What if there is a god who doesn't care about humans and didn't create them with immortal souls and who didn't create any special purpose for them, but rather created a universe and didn't interfere with it from then on? Still everything ends after you die. I think they had to call him out on that immediately (especially given that almost all the arguments Craig gave for the existence of God were deistic, not theistic, let alone Christian).

Also, they had to make clear from the very beginning that they are defending the position that "there is no evidence for any purpose, intent, etc. in the universe", rather than "there is no purpose, intent, etc. in the universe". They failed to make that point from the very beginning, and this gave the theist side the opportunity to argue with a straw man (since there really is no way to prove that there is no purpose).

Also, I think I would also point out that even if we ever find evidence for purpose in the universe, that is not necessarily evidence for the existence of god (as a supernatural agent), because there could be many alternative explanations (like other forms of non-supernatural intelligence creating a purposeful world for us, kinda like the Matrix). The debate was not about whether or not God exists, but the theist side, especially Craig, was desperately trying to pull the debate to this, so it was worth pointing out.

I am not really going to weigh in much on what I have thought because I don't see that it will go anywhere.

But I do want to point out something that I thought was the most shocking statement of the debate. Dawkins says that the "Why" questions are "silly" and "useless" and we shouldn't waste our time with them.

Do others agree with him?

Why is Michio Kaku just sitting up on those stairs during the debate? Why is he even there?

Also, I keep expecting a Mexican wrestler to come out and tackle the speaker on the podium.

To answer your question, Jib, I for one don't agree with Dawkins one bit that It's a silly category of questions.

WLC will say all the stuff he normally says, Krauss will say its possible for things to come from nothing (including a universe), WLC will say that is only philosophy and not science since it can't be/isnt currently verified...

No, I don't agree, and I don't like that he says that, or at least that he phrases it the way he does. "Why" questions are valid to ask, but we shouldn't kid ourselves on the epistemological likelihood of actually answering them. I mean, Dawkins' way is pretty succinct if you really want to hammer home the empiricism bit and avoid some of the other implications of religion, but in the end it doesn't win many points in debate, and it cedes a huge chunk of territory to religion--Sam Harris would be disappointed.

As for the KCA, I'm incredibly disappointed that no one has reduced it to rubble in these debates, because it's an incredibly poor argument by contemporary standards. First, some of its assumptions are very shaky ("an actual infinite is impossible." Oh? Really? Why?), and second, even if you grant for the sake of argument that it's true, you have learned absolutely zero about "God," other than that he acts as a place holder for some nebulous First Cause. At least Aristotle was more up front about the fact that he doesn't see the Prime Mover doing much other than shoving something.

Seriously, like 95% of WLC's arguments could be defeated by a simple question, "how do you know?"

What he means is that this question phrased like that implies an answer necessarily exists. How would you answer me if I asked you "Why is your pet elf scratching your neck every day?" You say that you don't have a pet elf, but I keep insisting that you should answer me why your pet elf is scratching your neck on a regular basis.

The same thing happens with certain religious questions. "Why are we here?" (meaning something like "why have we been sent to earth?") Well, we weren't sent for a purpose, we "are" here because of evolution through natural selection and we have been born after our parents have engaged in sexual intercourse. This is the "how" and "why" question distinction that Dawkins was talking about. We explain the mechanisms (how), not the "purpose" of things (why). That's the reason "why" question don't make sense, hence they are silly.

The problem is with the phrasing. Religious people ask "why" questions as if it is obvious that everything has a purpose and we should be able to answer what the purpose of something is. But if it doesn't have an objective purpose, the why question is simply not relevant.

I watched the whole debate and I don't think neither side did a good job in presenting their position. This may be due to the silly format they chose.