Atheists afraid of debating Craig?
See efforts to influence Rosenberg (and others) to back out of debating Craig: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/12/a-proposal-for-all-future-debates-with-william-lane-craig/
See efforts to influence Rosenberg (and others) to back out of debating Craig: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/12/a-proposal-for-all-future-debates-with-william-lane-craig/
5 Comments
Sarin
January 1, 2013Sad. Dawkins clearly won’t debate because his relevance and sales would suffer. He would be exposed as being led by his emotions and not his intellect.
admin
January 3, 2013Yes, there is a debate amongst atheists over whether they ought to debate Craig on two levels. (1) Craig is a knowledgeable philosopher and a competent debater. While disagreeing with what Craig takes to know, they genuinely fear incompetent atheistic debaters because even if the atheist were a “good” philosopher, losing the debate would make atheism look bad. This is the first level. But there is a second level– a more sinister level –the level of Dawkins and Dawkin-like-clones: (2) Many who are of this category tend to be the “new atheists” and come with more bark than bite, sound than fury, and are really anti-theists in disguise with a political agenda to sabotage what they don’t like and so choose to control the masses by sophist type arguments as New Your Times best sellers and run from being truly “free thinkers.” Even the old line atheists are critical of some of these players while often turning a blind eye because they enjoy the fruit of the labor put out by these sophists.
Joe
January 5, 2013Sarin and Admin, good replies. Independently on the SymposiaChristi Group, I too utilized the word picture of the fact that Richard Dawkin’s ‘bark’ is far worse than his ‘bite’. The political use of power aspect I had overlooked. Thanks for your insights.
Pete
January 9, 2013I’m not sure that the assertion that the refusal to debate is based on maintaining “relevance and sales” as Sarin has mentioned, or that their arguments are completely malevolent as admin intimates. I think that the main reason that many atheists feel that debate is not a valuable endeavor is the fact that argument against faith is futile. Faith, by definition, is a belief in something that is untestable and, therefore, unfalsifiable. A scientific/logical argument against that is difficult if not impossible.
admin
January 9, 2013That’s what the debate it about Pete. Look forward to you being there! I’m not sure those holding a reasonable faith agree with your definition of faith. e.g. See an opposing view to yours posted on the Art of Faith Discussion. Presently, I don’t see how a non-blind, reasonable faith (i.e. some people do hold blind faith) is opposed to science or logic. Indeed, science for one requires it on its philosophically unprovable assumptions and can never give us certainly. Thus, belief in a scientific conclusion will always be probabilistic and thus a combination of faith+evidence. But see the other post in opposition to yours.