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Why I refuse to debate with William Craig Lane
Topic Started: Oct 27 2011, 01:01 PM (854 Views)
Moonbat
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Don't feel embarrassed if you've never heard of William Lane Craig. He parades himself as a philosopher, but none of the professors of philosophy whom I consulted had heard his name either. Perhaps he is a "theologian". For some years now, Craig has been increasingly importunate in his efforts to cajole, harass or defame me into a debate with him. I have consistently refused, in the spirit, if not the letter, of a famous retort by the then president of the Royal Society: "That would look great on your CV, not so good on mine".

Craig's latest stalking foray has taken the form of a string of increasingly hectoring challenges to confront him in Oxford this October. I took pleasure in refusing again, which threw him and his followers into a frenzy of blogging, tweeting and YouTubed accusations of cowardice. To this I would only say I that I turn down hundreds of more worthy invitations every year, I have publicly engaged an archbishop of York, two archbishops of Canterbury, many bishops and the chief rabbi, and I'm looking forward to my imminent, doubtless civilised encounter with the present archbishop of Canterbury.

In an epitome of bullying presumption, Craig now proposes to place an empty chair on a stage in Oxford next week to symbolise my absence. The idea of cashing in on another's name by conniving to share a stage with him is hardly new. But what are we to make of this attempt to turn my non-appearance into a self-promotion stunt? In the interests of transparency, I should point out that it isn't only Oxford that won't see me on the night Craig proposes to debate me in absentia: you can also see me not appear in Cambridge, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and, if time allows, Bristol.

But Craig is not just a figure of fun. He has a dark side, and that is putting it kindly. Most churchmen these days wisely disown the horrific genocides ordered by the God of the Old Testament. Anyone who criticises the divine bloodlust is loudly accused of unfairly ignoring the historical context, and of naive literalism towards what was never more than metaphor or myth. You would search far to find a modern preacher willing to defend God's commandment, in Deuteronomy 20: 13-15, to kill all the men in a conquered city and to seize the women, children and livestock as plunder. And verses 16 and 17 are even worse:

"But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them"

You might say that such a call to genocide could never have come from a good and loving God. Any decent bishop, priest, vicar or rabbi would agree. But listen to Craig. He begins by arguing that the Canaanites were debauched and sinful and therefore deserved to be slaughtered. He then notices the plight of the Canaanite children.

"But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel's part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, 'You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods' (Deut 7.3-4). […] God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. […] Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives."

Do not plead that I have taken these revolting words out of context. What context could possibly justify them?

"So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli [sic] soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli [sic] soldiers is disturbing."

Oh, the poor soldiers. Let's hope they received counselling after their traumatic experience. A later post by Craig is – if possible – even more shocking. Referring to his earlier article (above) he says:

"I have come to appreciate as a result of a closer reading of the biblical text that God's command to Israel was not primarily to exterminate the Canaanites but to drive them out of the land.[…] Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples.
It is therefore completely misleading to characterise God's command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and to occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. No one had to die in this whole affair."

So, apparently it was the Canaanites' own fault for not running away. Right.

Would you shake hands with a man who could write stuff like that? Would you share a platform with him? I wouldn't, and I won't. Even if I were not engaged to be in London on the day in question, I would be proud to leave that chair in Oxford eloquently empty.

And if any of my colleagues find themselves browbeaten or inveigled into a debate with this deplorable apologist for genocide, my advice to them would be to stand up, read aloud Craig's words as quoted above, then walk out and leave him talking not just to an empty chair but, one would hope, to a rapidly emptying hall as well.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/richard-dawkins-william-lane-craig
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Larry
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Looking at his bio, it's pretty easy to see why Dawkins is afraid of him and reduced to demonizing him to save face......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lane_Craig

Craig received a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1971 and two summa cum laude master's degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, in 1975, in philosophy of religion and ecclesiastical history.[4] He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy under John Hick at the University of Birmingham, England in 1977 and a Th.D. under Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich in 1984.[5] From 1980 to 1986 he was an assistant professor of philosophy at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He briefly held the position of associate professor of religious studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, from 1986 to 1987. From 1987 to 1994 Craig pursued further research at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Since 1996 he has held the position of research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.[5]

an American analytic philosopher, philosophical theologian, and Christian apologist. He is known for his work on the philosophy of time and the philosophy of religion, specifically the existence of God and the defense of Christian theism.[1] He has made major contributions to the philosophy of religion and his defense of the Kalām cosmological argument is the most widely discussed argument for the existence of God in contemporary Western philosophy.[2] He has authored or edited over 30 books including The Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979), Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (co-authored with Quentin Smith, 1993), Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time (2001), and Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (co-edited with Quentin Smith, 2007).[3]

Craig has debated with prominent intellectuals such as Antony Flew,[27] A. C. Grayling,[28] Daniel Dennett,[29] Lawrence Krauss,[30][31] Victor Stenger,[32] Peter Atkins,[33] and Christopher Hitchens.[34] Craig maintains that science and faith are connected and that the physical sciences are more open to the idea of a creator than they have been in recent history.[35] Popular New Atheist author Sam Harris described Craig at their Notre Dame University debate as "the one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists."[36]

Looks to me like it is Dawkins whose CV would get the boost.....
Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
To reduce it down so the liberals and atheists can follow along....

He'd eat Dawkins alive.
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ivorythumper
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I already tried to hook you up with a gig, Moonbat.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Moonbat
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I attended the debate between Craig Lane and Stephen Law who stepped in for Polly Toynbee.

As I've noted before Craig Lane is quite a good debater, he uses a measured tone of voice, he does not belittle his opponents, he tends to make 2-3 points over 12 minutes then recaps them for the final 2.

However his arguments were spectacularly terrible.

For instance he started off by claiming that the universe could not be infinitely old because infinity was a weird concept ('metaphysically there are grave problems with infinity' or something like that but it amounted to the same thing) he actually trotted out a few bog standard examples e.g. if you have an infinite number of coins and then you give away half of your coins you still have an infinite number of coins. It got even worse from there. (The usual if there's a beginning there must be cause and then the mind boggling assertion that that cause had to be it to be a "timeless immaterial personal being".)

Argument no.2 was:

1. For there to be an objective morality you need a deity
2. There is objective morality
3. Therefore there is a deity.

This is supposedly the most intellectually rigorous defence for theology?

Stephen Law did not really take his arguments on at all, instead focusing on the theodicy argument with an interesting twist: if someone put to you the idea that there is an infinitely evil God you would reject this as ridiculous by pointing to all the good things that happen, the love people feel for one another, babies laughing in the sunlight, etc. etc., then of course he points out that the same reasoning applies to an infinitely good God, furthermore all the get out clauses that are supposedly able to defend an infinitely good God, i.e. free will, master plan where everything works out, the good of afterlife outweighing everything etc. etc. can all be brought out for an infinitely evil one too.

Craig Lane claimed (as I thought he would) that an infinitely evil God was not ridiculous. Or atleast that an evil God is not made ridiculous by observing the world.
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Moonbat
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Looks to me like it is Dawkins whose CV would get the boost.....


:spit:

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He'd eat Dawkins alive.


:spit: :spit:
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Luke's Dad
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One problem with the concept of an infinitely evil God. Evil by our definition must destroy. Creation would be anathema to it.
The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it.
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Moonbat
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Meh you could say "evil" will destroy "good" things and create "evil" things and "good" will destroy "evil" things and create "good" ones.
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ivorythumper
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Moonbat
Oct 27 2011, 04:36 PM
Meh you could say "evil" will destroy "good" things and create "evil" things and "good" will destroy "evil" things and create "good" ones.
Unless you ground terms like "good" and "evil" in reason and observation and don't think in terms of dualism.
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Jane D'Oh
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Pfft.
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John D'Oh
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Larry
Oct 27 2011, 02:04 PM
To reduce it down so the liberals and atheists can follow along....

He'd eat Dawkins alive.
How do you mean, is he a cannibal, or does he like to play the pink clarinet?
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Jane D'Oh
Oct 27 2011, 04:47 PM
.
Hi John. :wave:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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George K
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ivorythumper
Oct 27 2011, 04:48 PM
Jane D'Oh
Oct 27 2011, 04:47 PM
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Hi John. :wave:
:lol2:
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brenda
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..............
George K
Oct 27 2011, 04:50 PM
ivorythumper
Oct 27 2011, 04:48 PM
Jane D'Oh
Oct 27 2011, 04:47 PM
.
Hi John. :wave:
:lol2:
Cruel he is. Whenever he does that, it makes me miss our Jane. :sad:
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Moonbat
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Unless you ground terms like "good" and "evil" in reason and observation and don't think in terms of dualism.


One can proclaim that there is good and there is evil, one can proclaim that there is just good and evil is merely the lack of good or one can proclaim there is just evil and good is merely the lack of evil.

It's just semantics, it says nothing. There can be no observations favouring one of these statements over the others for the statements are not empirical claims at all.
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ivorythumper
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Moonbat
Oct 27 2011, 04:54 PM
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Unless you ground terms like "good" and "evil" in reason and observation and don't think in terms of dualism.


One can proclaim that there is good and there is evil, one can proclaim that there is just good and evil is merely the lack of good or one can proclaim there is just evil and good is the lack evil.

It's just semantics, it says nothing, there can be no observations favouring one over the other for the statements are not empirical claims at all.
That would be like saying:

One can proclaim that there is light and there is dark, one can proclaim that there is just light and dark is merely the lack of light or one can proclaim there is just dark and light is the lack dark.

or

One can proclaim that there is heat and there is cold, one can proclaim that there is just heat and cold is merely the lack of heat or one can proclaim there is just cold and heat is the lack cold.

It's just semantics, it says nothing, there can be no observations favouring one over the other for the statements are not empirical claims at all.

(and preemptively, unless you want to say that things like raping and poisoning people are not empirically bad/evil and things like feeding the poor or dressing a wound are not empirically good, then I don't know how can disqualify the parallels).
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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John D'Oh
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brenda
Oct 27 2011, 04:53 PM
George K
Oct 27 2011, 04:50 PM
ivorythumper
Oct 27 2011, 04:48 PM
Jane D'Oh
Oct 27 2011, 04:47 PM
.
Hi John. :wave:
:lol2:
Cruel he is. Whenever he does that, it makes me miss our Jane. :sad:
Mrs. D'Oh's got more sense than to get involved with this kind of ridiculous thread.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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John D'Oh
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ivorythumper
Oct 27 2011, 05:01 PM
(and preemptively, unless you want to say that things like raping and poisoning people are not empirically bad/evil and things like feeding the poor or dressing a wound are not empirically good, then I don't know how can disqualify the parallels).
Do you mean raping and poisoning someone, and then feeding them and dressing their wounds, or is it all different people? Because if you mean it's all the same person, then I think that's a bit unrealistic. If anything, you'd do the feeding and dressing the wounds first, in order to gain their trust, and then, just when they weren't expecting it, you'd slip them a dodgy sandwich, and rape them after they fell over.
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Moonbat
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One can proclaim that there is light and there is dark, one can proclaim that there is just light and dark is merely the lack of light or one can proclaim there is just dark and light is the lack dark.


Indeed one could.

If you couldn't measure photons.

Quote:
 

One can proclaim that there is heat and there is cold, one can proclaim that there is just heat and cold is merely the lack of heat or one can proclaim there is just cold and heat is the lack cold.


Indeed one could.

If you couldn't measure phonons.


We could have found a world with both light particles and dark particles (e.g. we find a world with both positive charge and negative charge), or we could have found a world with just dark particles or with just light particles. An equivalent statement can be made for what we experience as heat and cold.

We can easily think about what differences we would expect to see in a world where there really were only dark particles. In fact you can picture it pretty easily by looking at negatives. You could also explain what we would see if there really were both light particles and dark particles (you could do experiments that would detect particles of dark. You would find that you could make a room appear dimmer by adding more dark sources whilst holding the light sources constant, etc. etc.) that's what makes the theories empirical that's what makes them testable, and that's what necessarily lifts them above mere semantics.

Can you tell me what you would expect to see in a world where there really was both "good" and "evil" or where "good" really was the absence of "evil"?
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
John, I think your latter observation has been covered in that Deuteronomy mythology yarn.
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
John D'Oh
Oct 27 2011, 05:07 PM
ivorythumper
Oct 27 2011, 05:01 PM
(and preemptively, unless you want to say that things like raping and poisoning people are not empirically bad/evil and things like feeding the poor or dressing a wound are not empirically good, then I don't know how can disqualify the parallels).
Do you mean raping and poisoning someone, and then feeding them and dressing their wounds, or is it all different people? Because if you mean it's all the same person, then I think that's a bit unrealistic. If anything, you'd do the feeding and dressing the wounds first, in order to gain their trust, and then, just when they weren't expecting it, you'd slip them a dodgy sandwich, and rape them after they fell over.
The voice of experience, huh? :lol2:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Moonbat
Oct 27 2011, 05:24 PM
Can you tell me what you would expect to see in a world where there really was both "good" and "evil" or where "good" really was the absence of "evil"?
LOTR :whome:
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ivorythumper
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Moonbat
Oct 27 2011, 05:24 PM

One can proclaim that there is heat and there is cold, one can proclaim that there is just heat and cold is merely the lack of heat or one can proclaim there is just cold and heat is the lack cold.


Indeed one could.

If you couldn't measure phonons.

So is there some way of exciting matter than produces cold without removing the heat from somewhere else?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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John D'Oh
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ivorythumper
Oct 27 2011, 06:05 PM
Quote:
 
Moonbat
Oct 27 2011, 05:24 PM

One can proclaim that there is heat and there is cold, one can proclaim that there is just heat and cold is merely the lack of heat or one can proclaim there is just cold and heat is the lack cold.


Indeed one could.

If you couldn't measure phonons.

So is there some way of exciting matter than produces cold without removing the heat from somewhere else?
You have to remove the energy from somewhere else, since energy is always conserved, however that energy wouldn't necessarily be heat. After they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, there wasn't this place in Idaho that suddenly got really, really frigid.

Come to think of it, maybe there was.
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