William Lane Craig: Is God a Delusion? Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford October 2011

Richard Dawkins was invited by the Oxford student Christian Union to defend his book The God Delusion in public debate with William Lane Craig. The invitation remained open until the last minute. However, Dawkins refused the challenge and his chair remained empty. Craig then gave a lecture to a capacity audience on the weaknesses of the central arguments of the book and responded to a panel of academics. The event, which was chaired by atheist Prof. Peter Millican, was part of The Reasonable Faith Tour 2011 sponsored by UCCF, Damaris & Premier Christian Radio.

For more information please visit:

http://www.bethinking.org/craig
http://www.premier.org.uk/craig

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[Mentat1231]

Are you being serious, BA? Craig has never asserted that everything which exists, except God, must have a cause, and you know it. Likewise, I'm not saying that God is the ONLY non-physical mind, or that there can't be others. I am just saying that nothing we look at in a physical mind is going to tell us anything about whether non-physical ones might also exist. It's like rejecting the machinery on the other planet because we can't find any aliens on our own planet! How silly!

[Mentat1231]

All of these scientists treat fine-tuning as a scientific datum. Of course, such data are always up for refutation, but these leading scientists have written chapters and even entire books on why fine-tuning is remarkable. There is no special pleading or cherry-picking going on; the leading scientific position is that fine-tuning is real. Period. That's why they're all working on multiverse scenarios to explain it!

[BattleshipAgincourt]

Again demonstrating that your argument is one of ignorance and not based on evidence. Special pleading as you've stated isn't limiting something to only one example... it's making your one thing exempt from the same rules of logic by which you evaluate everything else. And that's what Craig does by asserting that everything which exists EXCEPT his god had a cause. And likewise you exempt your god from the same evidence I've presented by asserting that it works differently from humans.

[Kenith Adams]

I'm really getting tired of your special pleading, denial of facts and misrepresentations of scientists. It's funny that you toss out all these fancy names with PhD's attached to them with the odd cherry picked quote here or there but then ignore their entire body of work which shits all over your point.

You may think they've arrived at an answer but obviously they don't, which is why they continue their work.

[Mentat1231]

Special pleading doesn't mean "having only one example". I've told you this numerous times.

[Mentat1231]

But I think the fact that the Universe had a beginning, the fact that the initial conditions were fine-tuned, the fact that the Universe obeys laws and that it is mathematical in structure, the fact that moral values and duties actually exist, etc... I think these are all evidence of God's existence. So when you say "we have none", I have to say "do some more research, because the arguments and evidence are there".