An atheistic philosophy lecturer’s message to Richard Dawkins, concerning his refusal to engage in debate with William Lane Craig:
In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr [Daniel] Came said: “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.”
[From Richard Dawkins accused of cowardice for refusing to debate existence of God - Telegraph]
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I’ve always wondered how Dawkins got a pass on his excuse. I mean, he can debate whoever he pleases (so long as they’re willing too, of course), but the excuse in this case is just transparently bad.
Richard Dawkins has spoken about William Lane Craig in the following terms.
‘One of our commenters on another thread, stevencarrwork, posted a link to this article by the American theologian and Christian apologist William Lane Craig. I read it and found it so dumbfoundingly, staggeringly awful that I wanted to post it again. It is a stunning example of the theological mind at work. And remember, this is NOT an ‘extremist’, ‘fundamentalist’, ‘picking on the worst case’ example. My understanding is that William Lane Craig is a widely respected apologist for the Christian religion.
Read his article and rub your eyes to make sure you are not having a bad dream.’
I don’t think those are the words of somebody hoping to debate Craig any time soon.
Obviously. This is typical of Dawkins.
Other than being a statement about his personal psychology and a boatload of name-calling, I’m not sure what else this represents.
Congratulations to you, though, Steven, for getting noticed by Dawkins.
The Craig article in question was this one, by the way.
In his debate with Sam Harris, Craig recommended Paul Copan’s recent book on the same topic. I reviewed it here, including:
Dawkins was careful—intentional, even—not to know what he was talking about when he dismissed Craig’s article that way.
Craig’s article does make you rub your eyes. It deals with the annihilation of the Canaanites by the Israelites at God’s command. At one point Craig asks:
Get this? The children were OK “for they inherit[ed] eternal life.” Well, all righty then. It’s the poor soldiers we should weep about.
But it gets even better! Turns out life was so brutal back then that the Israelite soldiers didn’t think twice about killing the entire population, so they were OK, too. Everybody was OK.
If there is something apologetics can’t excuse, I have yet to see it.
If there is something in apologetics that opponents can’t pull out of context, I have yet to see it.
That’s a killer argument, Tom.
From the perspective of mindless amoral evolution I don’t see why either olegt or Dawkins would find the Biblical account of the Israelites conquest of Canaan to be so disturbing. This is simply the account of one tribal group displacing another. It’s survival-of-the-fittest evolution in action. It should not offend people who have a modern evolutionary mindset and reject even the possibility of transcendent moral values.
As to Paul Copan’s writings, I find this quite disturbing:
The ends justify the means, eh?
JAD,
You are barking up the wrong tree. Evolutionary biology does not operate with terms like morality because it isn’t its turf. You might as well blame particle physics for being amoral.
olegt:
Your last several comments betray an inability (and quite likely lack of intention) to address these issues seriously.
The point is not the efficacy of apologetics and trying to understand certain actions of God. Rather, the question is on what objective and verifiable basis can a critical thinker assume you are any kind of moral authority to judge God in the first place? Your emotional opinions interest no one–and remain just that… opinions.
Of course any critical thinker will agree with the obvious point that neither physics nor biology operate in the realm of classically-understood practical (meaning: moral) knowledge.
The problem is the one you face–not believers: if there is no God, then there is no ultimate and objective basis for making moral assertions or judgments… and no modern empirical science can address that issue. The result of playing by your atheistic and disordered vision of reality is the following: your own moralizing is reduced to a lot of hot air.
No one is arguing that these are easy issues with which every believer grapples. St Thomas Aquinas noted the argument against faith based on the existence of evil is the strongest argument–MES arguments pale into insignificance precisely because they can’t addresses these issue… with which you’ve just agreed. The problem for you is that because you can’t define good and evil in any reasonable, objective, verifiable way, statements like “God can permit evil to occur in order to produce a greater good” are meaningless to you. But, they are “meaningless” because of your opinions and your (perhaps latent) scientism–not because they are meaningless in and of themselves.
And, no, you cannot logically make the tu quoque claim that neither can believers understand moral issues in objective ways. That’s an ignorant claim. Why? What is your basis for the tu quoque? The MESs? Nope, you just agreed that can’t be it. Moral relativism? Please, don’t make us laugh at your will-to-power assertions. Some other basis? Pray, do share with us that vision…
When it comes to serious questions, you can’t seem to make peace with the fact that you’re an atheist… and you begin–like your counterparts–to appeal to all manner of fallacy, ignorance, a priori emotional commitments, etc., etc. You can’t seem to deal with the fact that, among all other religions and philosophies, Christianity does NOT primarily deal with what our obligations to God are or what “rules” we should obey. Christianity first and foremost starts from a startling–scandalous, in fact, notion: it start from what God did for us. That’s grace… AMAZING grace. You can’t deal with the fact that Christians are actually joyful people, and you can’t imagine “joy” and “Christianity” in the same phrase… nor do you want it that way, because it would challenge your and Matzke’s and dl’s dour-faced reductionism of humans to mere objects among other objects in the universe.
olegt, in response to your 9:49 comment:
First, my 9:44 am comment was done in a quick moment between events at church this morning. I didn’t have to write more.
Second, you actually had taken Craig badly out of context. What I wrote was relevant.
Third, if you think there was an argument of any sort contained in your own 9:10 am post—if you think you actually made a case—look again at what you wrote.
olegt,
You are wrong about evolutionary biology and ethics. Completely off base. Here’s why: evolutionary biology claims to be a comprehensive account for the origin and current state of human nature, both in organic function (our biology, physiology, etc.) and our behavior. Therefore it is, as many more well-rounded in their knowledge have noted, very relevant to morality.
Gotta go join another event again… but I thought I’d remind you of that first.
Olegt:
Oh? Darwin didn’t think so. Have you read his Descent of Man? He is definitely trying, in Descent, to use his theory to not only explain the evolution of human morality but also to provide a basis for it. Since then there have been a number of evolutionists who have tried to develop any evolution based ethic: E.O Wilson, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris and even Dawkins tries his hand at it here:
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v20011764nRA2J3Sn
If you don’t employ either a religiously or a philosophically transcendent based ethic(like Platonism)what then is your basis for making the moral judgment that the Israelites were evil in destroying the Canaanites? It seems to me that you want to have it both ways. You are first using something like an objectivist Judeo-Christian approach to find fault with what the Israelites did and then secondly rejecting that approach as an inadequate one to morality and ethics. But on what basis are you claiming that what the Israelites did was immoral in the first place?
But maybe you have a differnt approach. If so what is it? Please fill us in.
I think Holopupenko is spot on when he writes:
Tom wrote:
I’d like to see some supporting evidence for your claim, particularly concerning evolutionary biology providing “a comprehensive account… for our behavior.”
I often get the impression that the reason people think God cannot be justified in allowing or producing what we see in the OT is because that would be tantamount to playing God.
olegt,
I’d like to see some supporting evidence for your claim, particularly concerning evolutionary biology providing “a comprehensive account… for our behavior.”
I’m curious what part of human behavior you think evolutionary biology leaves out. Not just “lacks an answer for right now” but “regards inexplicable by evolutionary biology even in principle.”
I’ll give you a hint, Tom. Human behavior is the subject of other disciplines: psychology and neuroscience. These studies may be informed, in part, by biology, including its evolutionary aspects, but are by no means supplanted by them.
This is typical of all science. In a similar vein, results from particle and nuclear physics inform our understanding of, say, atomic physics and thereby of solid-state physics, but solid-state physicists still have their jobs.
Just to be clear, I said evolution claims to provide a comprehensive account, not that it succeeds.
And if you don’t know that, olegt, then I suggest you do some independent reading and get up to speed on your own. For me to have to establish that evolution attempts to do that should be as needless as it would be for you to argue that physics does not.
Tom wrote:
Here is what you wrote, Tom:
You are confusing evolutionary biology and human behavorial ecology. Here is a brief description of the discipline on Wikipedia:
In the video I linked to above (#14) Dawkins gets into a discussion/debate with Dutch primotologist Frans de Waal, who has had some very interesting things to say about morality and religion. For example, in an article he wrote for the NY Times back in 2010, he writes:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/
olegt,
I don’t think you’d be very impressed if I brought forth some physics-related argument—against Bell’s theorem, say—by copying and pasting from Wikipedia, would you? I’m not impressed with your homework here, either.
JAD has answered you, and you’ve ignored him. It seems to me that if you actually cared whether what I wrote was true, you would have responded to JAD, possibly even exploring the line he opened up. Since you didn’t do that, I don’t think there’s much evidence you’re trying to understand and learn. I don’t think you’re really interested in learning, and I’m not interested enough in this line of discussion to want to do your studying for you.
Tom wrote:
That would be a good analogy, Tom, if you were a biologist. As far as I know, you are not. I pointed you to the Wikipedia article so that you would get up to speed on the matter. It’s you who can’t tell evolutionary biology from human evolutionary ecology, not I.
As to JAD’s pointing to an early attempt by Darwin to explain the human nature in terms of natural selection, color me unimpressed. We have seen plenty of similarly misguided attempts at reductionism. For instance, people tried to describe light as mechanical oscillations of the aether. This mechanistic theory died. It turned out that electromagnetism is not reducible to mechanics and requires its own set of tools. So it is in other branches of science. As Phil Anderson famously wrote, “psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.”
Look, olegt, this is silly. It’s ridiculous, in fact. I don’t mean to be rude, but I think the description is accurate.
The question was whether evolution is relevant to ethics. You said,
I wrote that evolutionary biology is “relevant to morality.”
JAD demonstrated that evolutionary biology actually does operate with terms like morality. That really ought to have been enough to end this aspect of the discussion, because that was the point in question. He did more than I was willing to do; for although there are hundreds of other ways I could prove the point, I don’t think you care about the information and the learning involved, you only care about your own argument. I still think that; I think you have proved it again several times in this thread.
Meanwhile you thought that by showing that there is exists some field called human behavior ecology that is interested in morality, therefore evolutionary biology is not. Do you have even the slightest logical acumen whatever? Shall I suppose that because politics is concerned with finance, therefore economics is not? My gracious!
But it gets worse. You take it that because there is a field of study that is interested in morality and that, on your own accounting and by your own quote, “applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity,” and “overlaps with evolutionary psychology” that therefore evolutionary biology is not interested in morality. Or in other words, because there is a field of evolutionary research that is interested in morality, therefore evolution is not interested in morality!
For mercy’s sake, olegt, and for the reduction of your own embarrassment factor, please call a halt to this idiocy. If you come back with another comment of the same level of illogic again, I’m warning you I’m likely to euthanize it to limit the continuation of the pain.
P.S. I’m not a biologist but I do know what I’m talking about here.
“”Do you have even the slightest logical acumen whatever? “”
No. Demonstrated countless times.
Comment from Olegt euthanized, per my recent warning
Tom,
I do not appreciate this sort of treatment, but I am willing to let it go. I am curious to see you return to the subject of the thread and defend Craig.
What is the exact charge against which he must be defended? Illogic? Immorality? Ignorance? Stupidity? Something else? The defense for each takes different forms, so I want to know what you’re saying is the problem.
From the article:
“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.”
Exactly. I’m not surprised that Dawkins is afraid to debate Craig. When Oxford University was under constant assault from the animal rights extremists, Dawkins did not say or write one word of criticism. He did not defend science. He did not defend his colleagues. He did not defend the students at Oxford. He did nothing. On the other hand, when Nick Matzke said that Dawkins had played the Nazi card in the comments section of a rather obscure blog, suddenly Dawkins found something to get worked up about and he began to publicly attack Matzke as a “liar.”
Dawkins does not want to debate Craig because Dawkins knows all his acolytes will be expecting a series of knock-out blows. And he knows he cannot deliver those. And he knows that would hurt his carefully groomed public image for his fans.
Tom wrote:
It’s kind of obvious, Tom. It is preposterous to suggest that Canaanite children were not wronged.
It is preposterous to suggest that Canaanite children were not wronged.
By who, and how? Are you assuming God exists and Christianity is true for the purposes of this claim, or something else?
Crude,
Christianity has nothing to do with it. We’re talking about a story from the Old Testament. According to the story, the Israeli soldiers were commanded by God to slaughter the Canaanites, including women and children. I don’t believe in God, so in my view, the children were wronged by the Canaanite soldiers who engaged in a despicable crime, genocide. You tell me how this is not wrong.
Preposterous, maybe, although that’s debatable. But not impossible, right?
olegt,
I think Christianity does have something to do with it. Are you saying that if God exists, then God wronged the children? What is the basis for saying “wronged” here?
I’m splitting hairs, because it’s important to know if you’re trying to mount an internal critique or an external one, and what you’re assuming in that critique.
Crude,
It is certainly not my view that God exists. I think I made it clear in my comment. Therefore, in my view, if the story is real then the Israeli soldiers committed genocide.
If olegt is an atheist, I don’t see how he has any basis to say that anything is right or wrong.
As Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.”
JAD wrote:
Is it your position that I should not be allowed to serve on a jury?
Please answer this question. I am really curious.
olegt,
It is certainly not my view that God exists. I think I made it clear in my comment. Therefore, in my view, if the story is real then the Israeli soldiers committed genocide.
Like I said, it was a question of whether your critique was internal (granting the fundamental beliefs of Christianity) or external.
Apparently it’s not internal. Alright: So on what grounds do you say anyone was wronged in the OT story? You say they committed genocide – let’s grant that. What makes that wrong? And what does wrong mean here? ‘Violating some objective morality’? ‘Doing something someone dislikes for whatever reason’? Something else?
I’m going to skip ahead here, because I get the feeling this may come up: Yes, these are philosophical questions, because the statement is ultimately a philosophical one, maybe even a theological one. I now and then have seen you advance the notion that philosophy is next to useless and solves nothing. But I will say, whatever answers you supply me will have to rely on philosophy, unless you bow out entirely.
Further, both Copan’s and Craig’s reply assumed for the purposes of discussion that God exists – and assuming that would greatly influence how we’d evaluate that OT story anyway.
True, but I think we could grant a maladroit stance of “objective morality and atheism are consistent” to an atheist interlocutor and still argue against the “preposterous” charge. Most certainly we could dismiss any charge of impossibility that the Canaanite children were not wronged. No one in this conversation has taken up the latter position explicitly, so that’s why I asked olegt for clarification.
Crude said:
You are assuming that ethics and morality are impossible without religion, Crude. That is not so. It can be a prevailing view in a secular society. How the view arises is an interesting question, but I am not planning to get into it.
olegt,
You are assuming that ethics and morality are impossible without religion, Crude. That is not so. It can be a prevailing view in a secular society. How the view arises is an interesting question, but I am not planning to get into it.
I am assuming no such thing – I am asking you if that is your position, and if so, to justify it. But if you’re not going to defend it, then that’s that.
“Ethics”, insofar as they are rules, are of course possible for atheists. Yes, atheists can play monopoly, but at the end of the day the rules are either subjective, arbitrary or both. “Morality” is another question, and it depends on what it means. More rules without any real grounding? Again, sure, it’s possible. It’s what those “ethics” and “morality” are at the end of the day that’s the question.
According to Paul Copan there are a couple of things one needs to keep in mind before one begins leveling the charge of “genocide” against the Israelites.
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2010/12/is-god-a-moral-monster/
It’s interesting that you should bring up “real grounding,” Crude. The etymology of this expression dates back to at least the 16th century. To be well grounded, an object has to be fixed in the ground. The earth is a pretty heavy object that seemed unmovable. Now we know, of course, that the earth has a large but finite mass. Should we worry that the grounding is not absolute? I don’t think so.
What does it have to do with ethics and morality? Just like the grounding, it need not be absolute, just heavy enough. A prevailing view in a society can serve as such. There will always be people who will violate the societal norms, but hey, Christians sin, too.
So, JAD, are you saying no children were harmed? I am so relieved! Email Craig and tell him not to worry.
By the way, I have a question waiting for you.
olegt,
What does it have to do with ethics and morality? Just like the grounding, it need not be absolute, just heavy enough. A prevailing view in a society can serve as such.
Yes, if your gas chambers are in working order and your police are loyal, you can enforce your ethics very well. Again, I’m not doubting people can enforce their chosen ethics or “morality” by force, or whim, or otherwise. In fact, that’s in large part the point: It exposes what atheist & materialist morality and ethics are at the end of the day.
Crude,
I am sure the prospect of fire and brimstone works equally well, particularly when it is reinforced with a death penalty for heresy.
But that is beside the point. We can dislike each other’s reasons for having ethics but we can agree that we have some common ethics and morality. Let’s take it from there.
I want to add something.
If the “prevailing view of society” is declared as “sufficient to ground morality”, then it’s hard to see how the israelites in the OT were wrong, even on the harshest reading. I’m willing to bet the prevailing view of society was that they were in the right.
Of course you can say, “Oh, but NOW we disagree. So now, they’re in the wrong.” But that would just show how fluid the whole thing is. In 200 years, they may be right again. Why, they may even be right now after all.
olegt,
You set me a hard, nay, impossible task; and the impossibility is based in your illogic, not in my own position.
Your charge against God is,
and
and
So I think what you want me to supply is some reason not to think it preposterous that Canaanite children were not wronged; and you want this in terms that have nothing to do with Christianity, and also in terms I can convince you this is not wrong while you continue to disbelieve in God.
The problem of course is this: you want us to explain how it could have been okay for the God who doesn’t exist to have done commanded what that God commanded. If I answer in terms of what Christianity knows to be true about that God, then you will say Christianity has nothing to do with it.
You want us to explain how our system of belief can be true, given that (as you see it) our system of belief is false. Kind of stacks the cards illegitimately, doesn’t it? The technical term for this is petitio principii. It happens all the time here, but oddly almost always in the atheists’/skeptics’ comments, as I noted here. It is a sign of irrationality and disordered and/or incompetent thinking.
Here is my defense, at any rate.
Crude wrote:
Excellent point, Crude! That’s exactly why the Bible makes sense—to an atheist. Christian apologists are trying hard to square the circle and explain away the apparently cruel behavior of the Old Testament God. Their mental acrobatics are nothing if not spectacular.
But look at this from the position of an atheist and it all makes sense! The prevailing views in societies change. The change of God’s attitude from the Old to New Testament reflects precisely that. In the good old days, it was entirely acceptable to wipe out an entire city with its inhabitants, women and children included. In the society’s view, it was imperative to annihilate the enemies and so the societal ethics demanded that. Not surprisingly, the attitude is sanctioned in the holy books.
But times change and so do gods.
Indeed, let’s. So on your view it’s only “preposterous” to suggest that Canaanite children were not wronged, not “impossible”? Well, I think it’s preposterous to think that light can be conceived of as both a wave and a particle. But it can, right?
So there’s a lot of things that sound preposterous but still we accept them in every day discourse. So what makes your charge of preposterousness rise to the level of harm to the Christian theist’s belief? I’m not saying it can’t, I’m just asking you to explain it a little more.
Congratulation: olegt is another card-carrying member of the idiot club.
Emotional outbursts don’t work, olegt. No one is claiming secular societies don’t have moral codes/standards. What you continue to avoid is whether that makes any sense or has any ultimate meaning other than the self-serving nonsense you propogate.
I also remind you that you are a member of an ethnic group that has, arguably, brought more pain and suffering to more people throughout history than any other—in absolute terms AND in relative terms… and continues to bully smaller nations (Georgia, only the latest). You, who rail against God; you who are a traitor to the brilliance of Soloviev and Berdiayev; your who are a traitor to the brilliance of spiritual Russian Orthodoxy; you who are an adherent of the most deadly ideology in history—atheism—have the temerity to accuse God of genocide. Really?
The blood is on your hands, as an athiest. It gets sticker the more it dries, doesn’t it?
olegt,
Excellent point, Crude!
Thanks! Well, we’ve established that, from an atheist point of view, the Israelites – even on the harshest interpretation – did nothing wrong. Indeed, ‘wrong’ is just ‘what we don’t like at the moment’. Exactly as Craig, Copan and other say is the case – and exactly as Harris and his defenders have denied.
You’ve made a really gracious concession here to myself, as well as Craig and others. It’s commendable.
Tom wrote:
No, no, Tom. You should feel free to answer it from your Christian perspective. In fact, I know that you did. I read that thread with great amazement. If I remember correctly, your answer was that genocide is OK as long as it is sanctioned by God. Correct me if I am wrong.
Crude wrote:
You are welcome, Crude, but I must correct you in one small detail. The actions of the Israelites were justified in their view, at their time. In our time, from our perspective, their actions wrong.
Olegt earlier asked:
Not necessarily. The Christian theist position is that even unbelievers, “who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.” (Rom. 2:14 & 15)
In other words, all human beings possess a moral sense or conscience… even atheists.
The problem here is that you are engaging in some moralizing. It is therefore legitimate that we ask you, what is the basis of your moralizing?
olegt,
The actions of the Israelites were justified in their view, at their time. In our time, from our perspective, their actions wrong.
“Our”? Since when?
If a given culture or community views the Israelites as right, then they are right. Including, say.. a religious community. Or even an atheist community. Indeed, it seems that you’d even apply this to God Himself – if God thinks it’s right, then it is right, at least for God. I suppose He would be a ‘community of 1′.
That’s the other side of the moral relativism, you know.
In this statement you are wrong. You have over-simplified it massively. The correction is contained in the series you and I have both linked to. I do not intend to re-write it here, for if you were so able to misunderstand it in its original location you would be equally able to do so in another.
olegt, you have again demonstrated that you show no interest in learning what Christianity actually says about these things.
What you are asking of me is to demonstrate to you what Christianity teaches about these things, and how it makes sense within the Christian framework. But you don’t want to learn, really, do you? If you did, you wouldn’t have mangled so badly the sense of what I wrote in that long series.
Since you don’t want to learn, I don’t want to waste time trying to explain—especially since I’ve done it once already. For that reason I’m not going to respond to your challenge any further.
JAD wrote:
JAD,
You have just given a reason why, in your view, I possess a moral sense. But in the next sentence you question my right to use it. That makes no sense, neither from your perspective (you know that I have it) nor from mine (see my comments starting here).
Discuss.
Tom,
At the end of your series, you made the following statement:
The statement is set in boldface type, italicized and centered, so I would assume that it accurately summarizes your position. Am I mistaken in this?
Read the series and find out for yourself, olegt.
Crude,
I have attempted twice to reply to your comment providing a link to a relevant story. Alas, Tom’s filter does not seem to approve of the link, I suppose. I suggest that you google an experiment conducted in 1966 by George Tamarin with a group of Israeli schoolchildren. It is rather instructive.
Tom wrote:
I have, Tom.
Can you tell me if that statement of yours is an accurate summary of your position? Pretty please?
The reason I used as many words as I did in that series is because that’s how many it took to explain it with the proper definitions, contexts, and so on. A summary of a complex issue is only good if it is used as a summary, and if the reader/listener regards it in light of the overall statement that has been made.
I would have thought you knew that already. Listen and learn. And if you want to understand my position, it is there for you to read.
Further, a short summary of a complex statement (if it is indeed a summary, which I leave for you to determine through your own research) is never appropriate to use as the basis for an argument. I sense you are looking for some short out-of-context statement to use a basis for an argument, and I’m not going there with you,
LOL! Being unable to defend Dawkins, olegt furiously changes the topic.
I trust you’ll all have a good night’s rest. It’s time where I live.
Tom,
Further down in that post, you echo your summary again:
Are you not saying that this particular act of genocide was permitted precisely because it was initiated by God? Which nuance am I missing?
Have the courage to affirm your position.
Holopupenko wrote:
One shouldn’t have to respond to such nonsense. In fact, said nonsense deserves to be erased from this thread and the perp get some time out.
Too bad that won’t happen.
Olegt: “Have the courage to affirm your position.”
Speaking of courage, what do you think of Dawkins’ excuse for not wanting to debate Craig?
And what was his excuse for not defending science and his colleagues?
Hop along, Mike. Science needs no defending from Craig.
“Science needs no defending from Craig.”
Agreed. But I was talking about his failure to defend science from the animal rights terrorists. Wanna try and answer my questions now?
Considering that olegt has already conceded the argument (for atheists using the cultural or subjective yardsticks, genocide is A-OK if they approve of it), I too would like to see an answer to Mike’s questions. It’s certainly on topic.
As Mike asked:
Speaking of courage, what do you think of Dawkins’ excuse for not wanting to debate Craig?
And what was his excuse for not defending science and his colleagues?
Oh, and in response to olegt’s suggested link, I offer up a link of my own that touches on some of Holopupenko’s concerns.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7802485.stm
I have affirmed my position, olegt.
Which nuance are you missing? Read the series and you might see. Apart from that, the other major nuances you seem to be missing might be these:
1. I’m not persuaded you really care about learning what Christianity teaches on this (I mentioned that already, but it’s a nuance, and maybe you’re missing it).
2. The reason I used as many words as I did in that series is because that’s how many it took to explain it with the proper definitions, contexts, and so on. A summary of a complex issue is only good if it is used as a summary, and if the reader/listener regards it in light of the overall statement that has been made. (Quoted from above, but apparently it’s a nuance you missed.)
3. A short summary of a complex statement (if it is indeed a summary, which I leave for you to determine through your own research) is never appropriate to use as the basis for an argument. (Quoted from above.)
4. Calling on me to have the “courage to affirm [my] position” is pathetically manipulative and weaselly. (It’s a step or two downward from your earlier “pretty, please?”) I published it on the Worldwide Web for anyone to see, quite some time ago.
5. I sense you are looking for some short out-of-context statement to use a basis for an argument, and I’m not going there with you. (Also quoted from above.)
That is my position concerning this discussion. My position concerning the charge of genocide is already there for you to read—right where I wrote it.
olegt,
“Hop along, Mike” was dismissive, rude, and out of line. He handled it with considerable class, by ignoring it.
By the way, speaking of courage to affirm one’s position, is Dawkins showing courage befitting his supposed world-class convictions and position when he fails to defend Oxford from animal-rights activists, and when he refuses to debate Craig?
A couple of olegt’s comments got caught in the comment spam filter last night. I didn’t notice it then and I don’t know why they got caught. I’m not just going to un-spam them, because they would get lost up the page. I am going to release them with an updated time stamp so they appear on the thread where we can see them.
Originally posted by olegt at 10:25 pm, May 15:
Crude wrote:
Another excellent point, Crude. Richard Dawkins in his book (which shall not be named) mentions an experiment conducted by George Tamarin [1]. You can read an excerpt here. Quite entertaining.
[1] G. R. Tamarin, “The Influence of Ethnic and Religious Prejudice on Moral Judgment,” New Outlook 9, 49 (1966).
Originally posted by olegt at 10:37 pm, May 15
Crude,
I replied to you but my post has disappeared. Follow this link for a story that is relevant to your comment.
Concerning children: Dawkins is demonstrably wrong and inexcusably, hypocritically, anti-scientific.
“Hop along,” Tom, was an inside joke. I am sure Mike got it.
But speaking of rudeness, what do you make of Holo’s attempt to paint the ethnic Russians with a broad brush? Are we all guilty of crimes we did not—and could not—commit? Is there blood on my hands because I was born in Russia? Perhaps he was a little too hasty in his generalizations?
And isn’t Crude’s concern a little, teensy-weensy trollish?
Point taken on “Hop along.” I get it now that I think about it. What concerned me about it is I thought you were being very controlling, which I now understand you weren’t.
I wasn’t happy with Holo’s thing about the Russians. It was buried in another series of statements so I did not pay it much attention; maybe my error. But then Crude provided data to support what he said! Crude is not being trollish in my view.
Holopupenko put it correctly in the end. He did not say the blood was on your hands as a Russian, but as an atheist.
But I still think (and I’m sure Holo will read this) that being Russian has nothing to do with anything on this thread, and it should not have been brought up that way, even in light of Crude’s link on that topic.
Tom wrote:
When you are a major figure like Dawkins, you can pick and choose your battles. He has a long-standing rule of not debating creationists. In his view, doing so gives them credibility they do not deserve. I fully agree with Dawkins on that one.
I know nothing about the animal-rights fight at Oxford and I will not follow that rabbit trail. (No pun intended this time.)
Let me get this straight, Tom. Because I am an atheist, I have blood on my hands? Could you explain the logic of this?
Tom wrote:
I do not share all of Dawkins’s positions. In particular, not being a card-carrying New Atheist, I do not agree with him that a religious upbringing amounts to child abuse.
So you’re dropping your defense of Dawkins here completely. Let that be duly noted.
I’m curious why you linked to that page about children, but we need not pursue that.
As for “blood on your hands,” it is a figure of speech, obviously.
The root of Stalin’s murders was actually not atheism, now that I think about it. It was sin: the sin of pride, power, control, disregard of human life, self-orientedness, lovelessness, murderousness, and more; all of that coupled together with opportunity. But these sins are inextricably tied up together with rejecting God, the Righteous One. To choose pride, power, control, selfishness, etc. is to choose against God. Every act of sin is essentially an act of overt or latent atheism. When I sin I am at the moment saying that I do not believe in God and his wisdom and love with respect to that decision.
Yet there is something considerably more to ideological atheism than this. It is the systematic rejection of God’s reality and righteousness. It places self in the place of God, as the one who can decide what is right and what is wrong. When a person with that view gains power to do whatever they want, they will do whatever they want, which in every case (as Lord Acton observed) has been something corrupt and vile.
Atheism is the rejection of the principle of overarching right and wrong. It has indeed led to tens of millions of murders. If you accept ideological atheism, I think it would be important for you to accept those two principles as its concomitants.
I don’t hold you accountable (“blood on your hands”) for Stalin’s murderousness, now that I think it through more completely. (Important side note: it’s not necessary in a blog discussion like this to always insist that one is always right and has always been right. I suggest you learn from this that one can learn rather than always argue.) I don’t think there is enough corporate solidarity in “atheism,” whatever that is, for you to be responsible for another atheist’s action in that sense. You’re on your own.
I mean, you’re really on your own. You have adopted a position very much on your own. You are only responsible for your own beliefs and actions, and you are choosing beliefs and actions that cut you off from God and his truth. That’s your choice, but you can change your mind.
The link to Tamarin’s experiment was in response to Crude’s comment, specifically this part:
The Israeli children in Tamarin’s experiment exhibited precisely this sort of religious motivation. 66 percent approved and 26 percent disapproved of the utter destruction of Jericho by the Israelites. Yet when the words Joshua and Israel were replaced with General Lin and a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago, the results were drastically different: only 7 percent approved and 72 percent disapproved. Exactly the same story, only the names changed.
Don’t you find that interesting?
Fascinating.
Tom wrote:
A figure of speech, obviously. Nothing personal. Well, that’s quite a relief, Tom. Thanks for being so open-minded.
Why, yes indeed: metaphorically speaking (did I really need to spell that out earlier?) there IS blood on olegt’s hands precisely because he not only adheres to but promotes atheism as, ahem, “rational”… in addition to promoting historically-subjective morality (boy, if that doesn’t echo Hegel, I don’t know what does) whose only possible outcome is the strong imposing their “morality” over the weak… hence atheism’s greatest contribution to society: genocide formally instituted and pursued with extreme prejudice.
What I find curious about the latter is olegt’s (1) lack of independent thinking, (2) consistency. If, as he asserts (wrongly) that what was right then is wrong now, then he’s just following the moral fashion of the day. Boy that’s brave, huh? Second, he misunderstands and rails against the [then] Jews/Canaanites thing, but doesn’t bat an eyelash over the [now] millions of lives destroyed through abortion.
Finally, let me dispatch to the dust bin olegt’s suggestion that he’s not a reductionist. Rubbish indeed! While he’s correct to admit physics cannot reduce to physics that which neuroscience studies, that’s not the point. In the examples olegt provides, he’s not operationally reductionist–GRANTED. But he IS ontologically reductionist. For example, the mind, while operationally not reducible to physics is nonetheless, for olegt, completely reducible to one ontological kind of being, i.e., to a mere material object or physical phenomenon. Of course, he’s not equipped to understand this point because he’s openly decried philosophy in favor of science… hence, by the way, the scientism.
Regarding the Russian ethnic thing: I lived in the Soviet Union and former Soviet Union for over 14 years. I know exactly what most Russians feel about non-Russians: the xenophobia is, to descend to the reductionism of Dawkins but only to draw out a point, in their blood… and that is far from my being the only observer of that kind of fear.
Tom wrote:
So, Tom, let’s assume the Israeli children had the innate sense of right and wrong. What accounts for the drastic change? I can share my thoughts on the matter and I am curious to hear yours.
Holo,
Your anti-Russian rants are getting tiresome. You know nothing about me personally and your generalizations miss the target by a mile. Ponder the fact that my wife is Ukrainian.
I wasn’t talking about you personally, olegt. The fact that you are Russian is irrelevant to the points I make, so simply stating that fact shouldn’t be a big deal… should it? Anyway, if we play by your moral-subjectivist rules, it really, ultimately shouldn’t matter, should it?
By the way, what about all the other points raised? Don’t worry, I’m not expecting much… if anything at all.
Holo,
Of course you weren’t talking about me personally when you said
It would be foolish to think you were.
Ethnicities should have nothing whatever to do with this discussion: mostly because they actually have nothing whatever to do with this discussion. Let’s leave them out, okay?
Oleg (comment #57)
I am not arguing about your rights. I am arguing that as an atheist you do not have a rational basis for making moral judgments and therefore your judgmentalism is irrational.
Our moral sense cannot adequately explained by Darwinian evolution.
Ironically, the very fact that we have a moral sense (a sense of right and wrong and justice) was the reason that C.S. Lewis converted from atheism to theism. In Mere Christianity he writes:
Let’s puts some facts on the table to show how disappointing it would be for us all if Dawkins were to accede to a meeting with Craig.
A good while ago, Dawkins agreed with Stephen Gould to distance himself from formal debate with creationists to avoid giving them publicity. William Lane Craig teaches at an religious institution that has a doctrinal statement that denies common ancestry and proposes that Adam and Eve were put on earth by the creator; this institution demands that its students agree to this doctrine.
This alone disqualifies Craig from expecting Dawkins (and any other scientist or philosopher) to even take him seriously, let alone provide him with a platform to gain credibility. At least someone like John Lennox or Alistair McGrath would never suggest that common ancestry was at all in doubt.
In his debate with Wolpert, Craig admitted that he had reserves about the evolution of sponges. If Dawkins has heard of this, he will no doubt form the opinion that Craig is a know-nothing.
Craig’s credentials, marred as they are by his ignorance of evolution (ask yourself why someone who is superficially experienced in mathematics, cosmology and quantum physics has not taken it upon themselves to study sufficiently the one scientific endeavour that destroys theology) are worsened by his alignment with an institute that is dedicated to overthrowing the scientific paradigm with religious dogma, namely the Discovery Institute where Craig enjoys a fellowship.
More reason, I am afraid, that Craig should not be expecting Dawkins to willingly want to go near him.
Dawkins was made aware of the kind of theologian Craig is when Craig’s defence of the slaughter of the Canaanites was brought to his attention. “I read it [the article] and found it so dumbfoundingly, staggeringly awful … It is a stunning example of the theological mind at work. And remember, this is NOT an ‘extremist’, ‘fundamentalist’, ‘picking on the worst case’ example. My understanding is that William Lane Craig is a widely respected apologist for the Christian religion. Read his article and rub your eyes to make sure you are not having a bad dream.”
I am sure that Dawkins is not the only person whose stomach would turn when sharing a stage with a mind capable of what Craig’s mind is.
Furthermore, Craig has been disingenuous to Dawkins when Craig disgracefully inferred with couched rhetoric that Dawkins was advocating that children be removed from their homes because their parents were teaching them religion.
I cannot imagine that this will have helped matters.
Recently, Craig has shown his true colours yet again with a debate with Lawrence Krauss which served merely to show that Craig is not interested in intellectual and academic exchange. Craig’s whole purpose in life is to provide pseudo-intellectuals through philosophy, with the superficial belief that there is substantial reason to believe in fairy tales. Indeed, Craig has publicly stated that there is not one jot of evidence that could ever persuade him that his religion, the religion he happened to be born into, is false; contrast that with what Dawkins stands for and ask what the purpose could ever be of arguing with Craig at all.
Galactor,
If Dawkins won’t debate “creationists,” that’s his choice. But it’s ludicrous to describe evolution as a “scientific endeavour that destroys theology.” My gracious. See how vulnerable you think “theology” is after reading this
As to Dawkins’s reaction to Craig, recall that this is Dawkins’s reaction to Craig. It’s not expected to be a faithful and charitable summary of Craig’s beliefs. If he’s that much in disagreement, and if he thinks Craig is that obviously wrong, why doesn’t he stand up and explain it? Instead like Sam Harris he takes the emotional, not the rational, road. You’re doing the same thing through much of your comment, if you hadn’t noticed:
You say,
A source for that, please? And just how disingenuous is that when Dawkins has publicly stated,
This erstwhile “Professor for the Public Understanding of Science” displayed some incredible hypocrisy with that, by the way.
Dawkins’ couch.
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/dawkins_and_the_religion_petit.php