Richard Dawkins voted #1 thinker in world

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It depends on what you mean by being good in debate. One can use some tricks to improve his position, but you won't use them if you want to debate, you'll use them if you want to make some people think you are better. For me Craig is a bad debater, because he uses circular reasoning, special pleading and arguments from ignorance. I don't know if I've ever heard a good argument by him. He definitely has some skills in those tricks, but you don't need an exceptional skills, I've seen a lot of politicians that uses the same tricks pretty well. But using them means that you actually aren't interested in the discussion at all. One has to think very critically of whatever someone using this tricks says, their purpose is to confuse and distract. The problem is that it's pretty difficult to defend against such tricks, if you don't want to do the same (turning the whole debate meaningless) and you actually want to debate.

Debate is ka ka. Debate is rhetorical kung fu. Debate is the flow of hot air.

More important than debate are verifiable facts, careful and reproduced measurement and sound logic.

Thomas Edison never debated. He just invented the light bulb and produced a power system that could make it shine.

ruveyn

... and it would never do to have Rick Santorum a better physicist than Dr. Hawking, simply because he had better pronounciation.

Dawkins is a joke, when it comes to his atheist views they're simply the rants of a child screaming 'If you don't agree with me you're wrong! LA LA LA I'm not listening to you!', for as long as he avoids discussions on religion by claiming those who are religious or negative-atheist are 'part of the problem' then he isn't capable of any real thought or argument on the subject. He's just a sad angry little atheist, who ironically thinks he's gods gift to the thinking world.

He's no idiot, but his ignorance and arrogance rules him out as a great thinker.

Nope, one does not have to be intellectually dishonest in order to be a good debater. Consider Shelly Kagan for example:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7g3lsFZ47Y[/youtube]

He held a relatively rational view in that debate and yet he was able to overpower William Lane Craig in the debate. That takes knowledge on how to debate properly. Notice how he actually addresses what Craig says and with clarity and eloquence. And he avoids making weak arguments that Craig can take advantage of.

Now consider the following video and note the difference:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vnjNbe5lyE[/youtube]

I've never said that. I think one actually has to be intellectually honest to be a good debater. I meant that there are some unfair tactics which one can hardly defend himself against. For example Gish Gallop. You can only point out to public what tactics the opponent uses and maybe refute a few claims showing that the opponents claims doesn't have to be as sound as it can seem. My point was that one needs more skill to defend against such tactics then to use them.

i dont agree with the decission

Who really decides this? Probably a staunchly atheistic group of elitist intellectuals, and it's all a bunch of backslapping. There are probably better candidates, but he happens to be the biggest name among them.

Very interesting people referenced here; I've learnt many new things from this topic.

And so it was with purpose.

#1 Thinker? REALLY?

More like "winner of a popularity contest participated in by a statistically irrelevant percentage of the global population, the vast majority of who were presumably atheists"

While I don't like Greco-Roman paganism, there are plenty of Ancient Greek philosophers whose ideas I respect.

What non-atheist has any respect for Dawkins?

First of all, William Lane Craig is an absolute moron.
His arguments make no sense whatsoever, and are entirely based on rhetorical trickery.

Second, Richard Dawkins is just winning a popularity contest here, his books are hardly that amazing, and his aggressive style is off-putting.

I would vote for someone like Slavoj Zizek if forced to vote for a thinker who's alive... I'm not really sure if even he deserves that title.

All in all, both parties (Craig and Dawkins) are missing the point entirely.

Yikes. That's a bit embarrassing.

He might be a strong contender for "World's Best Explainer" though. His biology books are great.

If he do that, then he's not a moron, just very intellectually dishonest possibly.

i don't think he's the greatest thinker in the world, but he is one of the most popular and one of the bravest most outspoken so it makes sense for him to have the award.

I find it funny, then, that the largest independent contributor to NASA is the vatican. Furthermore, we'd be centuries behind on both mathematics and economics if it weren't for the islamic scholars of the middle ages.



It doesn't matter if there are many or just a handful of scientists who are smarter than Dawkins. He gave a lot to science with The Selfish Gene, but for the past few decades, he's acting more like a hasbeen who just wants to sell books.