Richard Dawkins vs William Lane Craig

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UnEkydeDVQ&feature=sub[/youtube]

I can only encourage people to listen more Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, they are their own best argument against themselves.

What have the three horsemen (you left out Daniel Dennett) said that you find mistaken. You are aware, I assume that there is not a scrap of empirical evidence proving the existence of -any- gods. Not a single bit of evidence.

And can you deny that organized religion (churches, religious movements) have done more damage on balance than good?

ruveyn

^^^^

I do not agree with Dennett, but I do respect him, it would be wrong for me to include him in that list.

Also, as to your second statement. I would not agree with it. I do think however, that any ideology taken that is combined with a sense of personal superiority can be dangerous. I would recommend if you are interested to see how that applies also to atheism, please read 'The Rage Against God' by Peter Hitchens.

It also seems that you responded around three minutes after the video was posted, the video was six minutes long, now if you watched it you would have seen several arguments for the existence of God. It seems you made up your mind in advance.

I would say I made up my mind after 65 years (since I was 10) being exposed to bogus arguments that god or the gods exist (everything from Anselm to the Paley type argument from design). And I have yet to see a smidgin of empirical proof for the existence of the gods on the same order of verification that atoms exist (no one has seen atoms, but there is plenty of evidence). You might say I made up my mind after being exposed to bad arguments and lack of evidence for over six decades.
And besides I am very familiar with the points of view expressed by the Horsemen. Their positions have not varied much in many appearances and presentations they have made.

Logic and evidence is definitely not on the pro-god side. You will notice that religion retreats as science advances.

However religion thrives not on logic and evidence but on somethings much darker ---- fear (of death) and guilt.

ruveyn

A fundamentalist mind tends to see fundamentalism in any remark against his faith.

Similarly, far righters call everyone else far left, and vice versa.

I find it annoying of people to expect other guys to go through the trouble of downloading and watching a whole video, specially if the video is supposed to advocate for something that the other guys disagree with.

Reading is easy, it requires little to no download time and it is possible to read stuff quite fast. Videos on the other hand are so horribly slow paced, plus to me a 6 minutes long video would need 20 minutes of download...

In other words, transcript or it never happened.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 17 Dec 2010, 8:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

91, this isn't a serious comparison. You might as well have asked us to compare Ray Comfort with Michael Martin. Frankly, anybody with a lick of sense knows that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris are not at the top of the pole here. They are not talking on their area of expertise. They are public intellectuals. They are just good at getting attention. Probably a useful enough task, as I would put them higher on the totem pole than Ray Comfort. Certainly, they are fine for the lower ranges of intellectualism. After all, they do occasionally get in some notions that are somewhat valid.

Please name some intellectuals you think are higher "on the pole"

ruveyn

Could we do mde a favor and NOT use the term "intellectuals"?

A fine example of how words are subverted, since I was leetle Kinderl "intellectual" has meant somone on the spectrum between "ivory tower naif" and "sesquipedalian poseur". When on occasion someone has used it of me I have objected vociferously.

While Awesomely Glorious' "public intellectuals" is bei mir [why am I teutonic this morning?] appropriate in context, I would say we want to climb up the pole tooward thinkers [who certainly exist], not more intellectuals.

Sorry - Double Post

Last edited by jagatai on 17 Dec 2010, 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I believe they are usually referred to as intellectuals because the use their intellect.

I've read a number of books by Dawkins and one by Christopher Hitchens (On Thomas Paine's "The Rights Of Man") and I enjoy the deep research and careful logic that they use to support their arguments. Both often use a contentious style of argument and debate and that often offends people. I personally do not enjoy direct conflict. But careful logic, well asked questions and many years of study of evidence are extremely appealing to me.

Some people might call them intellectuals. You may not like the term. Frankly it doesn't matter what label might be placed on them. The only thing that matters is the strength of their arguments and the solidity of their evidence. You can call them dim-wits for all I care. It is the thinking that matters, not the label.

Do you want the short list or the long? Almost literally every single professor with philosophy of religion as their academic specialty is higher on the pole than those three. A lot of professors who don't even have that would also be above Dawkins on the pole. Now, I am not going to say that Dawkins and Harris are terrible men for their specialty, which is evolutionary biology for Dawkins, and neuroscience for Harris, but.... outside of that they are lightweights.

Btw, do you want a historical list, or do you want a current list? I already mentioned Michael Martin, I could also mention Richard Carrier, JL Mackie, Keith Parsons, JL Mackie(who is a historical figure), I'm pretty sure that the figure M_P loves, Taner Edis is also higher on that pole, Victor Stenger is higher on the pole, Austin Dacey is higher on the pole, John Loftus is higher, I mean.... there is a rather large list that you could probably find on www.infidels.org

So.... yeah.....

I have also read ‘God is not Great’, ‘Letter to a Christian Nation’ and ‘The God Delusion’, these are not atheism’s best works; AG is right about that. The problem is that many people consider these books, which are essentially popular in nature, to be proper arguments; which they are not. Every logical argument made by Dawkins in ‘The God Delusion’ is intellectually rubbish. On page 83, he blatantly embarrasses himself when he talks about modal logic.

His main argument (he calls it that) on pages 157-8 is so bad that its premise do not even logically follow one another. This occurs while he is invoking infinite regress and arguing against the straw man of a complex divine being. Even if it were true, which I do not grant for an instant, he states that complexity only occurs at the end of an evolutionary process. This is blatant evolutionary question begging and stands against his own statement that the teleological evidence is the result of a multiverse (something he provides no non-discredited argument relating to), which shows that the beginning of the universe is not the beginning point which his main argument presupposes. It is actually hard to imagine how someone could fit so many blunders into two pages of argument.

The problem I have is that many people pick these books up and think that they are well argued and logically careful and are taken in by them. Despite the fact that this is clearly not the case.

Who says the universe has to have a purpose?

Good question, no one really, not me anyway. In the personal sense, I would agree with you.

In the existential sense, I would argue it does have a purpose. This is due to the evidence for the existence of God (I have outlined and defended some of those arguments in threads around the here), given that I believe that God exists, I would argue that the Universe does have a purpose. As to if it 'must' have a purpose, I cannot really say for certain in any conclusive way. I do think that given the logical nature of God, as a morally perfect being, I would argue that 'this' universe must have a purpose. If this is not the case the evil that exists occurs without justification and therefor be logically inconsistent with the nature of God. As to the question of 'must the universe have a purpose', I suppose that it might be possible that some universe could exist where no purpose existed, but it would also be a universe with nothing in it, as every thing that exists must have a contingent explanation (also the explanation of the existence of the universe in the philosophical sense requires, according to the arguments I have put forward, the necessary existence of God) and it would have to be a place with no evil.

So you would argue that the universe has a purpose due to the existance of God? The only problem is, the Teological argument for God (i.e. argument from purpose), which I was actually replying to from the video, then becomes circular. As for the argument that there would be now good or evil in a universe without a purpose, I could argue that they don't even exist as fundamentals in this universe. That good and evil are merely man-made constructs to describe what actions are useful and what's not useful for the social cohesion of a functioning human society.

It should be noted that "good" and "evil" are imaginary terms invented by religions to describe conformity or non-conformity to religious dogma. Many events are totally neutral such as avalanches, random explosions, lighting strikes, tornadoes, etc. If no one is around they have no value. If someone is injured or killed there is a tendency to label them s evil but where is this evil? Is it in the violent event or is it in the presence of someone at the event or is it in the vulnerability of the victim?
Ina a human even where a criminal profits from a robbery the terms are also dependent upon the viewpoint. A successful robbery is obviously good for the robber. In war a successful attack that kills many innocents also id ambiguous dependent upon the viewpoint. The terms are entirely viewpoint dependent.