Richard Dawkins says he won't debate William Lane Craig

Richard Dawkins explains why he won't debate William Lane Craig

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[MysticPsyche]

Funny how militant atheist Dawkinites are trying to defend and rescue their disgraceful hero.

[Michael Fitch]

Dawkins will not debate because

A.) one is a creationist

B.) one is a professional debater

William Lane Craig

A.) Is not a creationist

B.) Is an internationally educated professor of theology (which Dawkins is attacking) and published author at both the academic and popular level.

Therefore:

Dawkins has no reason NOT to debate Craig.

[Asula Sperling]

He is a presuppositionalist, but when that is addressed, he blatantly and dishonestly denies it. He is entrapped in his delusion, his way of thinking rotating around the conclusion he made right of the bat. That god exists and that he is the christian god. If you watch him talk, having this in mind, you see how blatantly obvious it is. Scripture can not be defended honestly, anyone stating otherwise has not read the scripture, or is also presupposing, an academical fallacy.

[Lee Dunstan]

Yes, quite right.

I suppose that brings us to another point to be made about WLC as he seems for the most part (At least to my understanding) to argue from a deistic standpoint rather than a theistic one, I think you hit the nail on the head as to why that is. Very cunning of him though, to eliminate the Bible's weaknesses right off the bat and close the doors for scrutiny of scripture.

[Asula Sperling]

Yes, free will is an illusion, less than an illusion even some might argue. We are organic machines, obeying the physical laws, our very thoughts constrained by cause and effect. There is no evidence for anything metaphysical, like the concept of souls, or for the supernatural. Thus I believe that with sufficient understanding and research, we will one day be able to create true artificial intelligence that might be equal or even superior in intellect to our own.

[Asula Sperling]

Indeed. We are programmed, but that does not point to the need for a good. We have sufficient evidence in the fields of emergence and evolution, supplemented and consistent with many other fields of science which show how that information can emerge within an universe such as our own, from self-governing systems. Those explanations are elegant and consistent, rooted in material evidence and the observable universe. There is no such case for the existence of a supreme being. But we never know :)

[Asula Sperling]

The problem is that those arguments do not lead us directly to the conclusion of the existence of the judeo christian god. Even if we would acknowledge that those arguments could point to the presence of a god, (which they don't) there is no way you can use them to connect them to the judeo christian version of said god. Grasping at straws to look for justification for a pre-determined conclusion does not work in a rational debate. Punto.

[Asula Sperling]

The result would have been the same. There is no convincing argument for the existence of the christian good rooted in evidence connected with our reality. It is all just platonic beating around the bush and committing one fallacy after the other for craig. He is good at hiding the use of red herrings and straw-men, eloquently avoiding to address his oppositions strongest arguments, but does that make them any less necessary to be addressed by him if he wants to gain credulity? No.

[Lee Dunstan]

I guess what bugs me about those arguments is they've already been disputed numerous times and I feel convincingly refuted too (To some degree at least). Once he's passed those arguments he's on fire for the most part though, certainly presenting a great challenge to any Atheist out there and I'll be sure to check out the WLC vs AR debate.

My stance on this is even though RD isn't as good as Hitchens or Harris, he should debate WLC for the sake of his (as well as his supporter's) image.