 It is a delight to be joined this evening by William Lane Craig, who will just be in a moment giving a lecture in response to Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. Now, it would have been great to be able to welcome Professor Richard Dawkins here this evening for public debate. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to make it. A couple of years ago, I published an article in which I described the Renaissance among contemporary philosophers concerning arguments for the existence of God. And it was fascinating to read the discussion in the blogosphere in response to this article. Along with expressions of appreciation, there were also comments like the following. Dawkins, The God Delusion, soundly deals with these arguments. Did you even do any research? Or again, have you even read Dawkins' apostrophe-S book? He answers every one of those arguments quite well. Or again, I was dismayed that Dr. Craig has used these arguments to defend the existence of God. As someone mentioned before, has he even read Dawkins' book? Well, what is remarkable about these comments is the degree of confidence placed in Richard Dawkins' supposed refutation of the arguments for God's existence. Are they right? Has Richard Dawkins dealt the death blow to these theistic arguments that I discussed? But although he says that there is no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference, the fact is that Richard Dawkins is a stubborn moralist. He vigorously condemns such actions as the harassment and abuse of homosexuals, the religious indoctrination of children, the inking practice of human sacrifice, and prizing cultural diversity over the interests of Amish children. He even goes so far as to offer his own amended 10 commandments for guiding moral behavior. All the while marvelously oblivious to the contradiction with his ethical subjectivism. Thus, affirming both premises of the moral argument, Dawkins is on pain of irrationality committed to the argument's conclusion, namely that God exists. Thirdly, the teleological argument. The cutting edge of contemporary discussion of the teleological or design argument concerns the remarkable fine-tuning of the cosmos for life. Dawkins responds to this form of the argument in chapter four of his book under the heading The Anthropic Principle Cosmological Version. Here's a simple formulation of a teleological argument based on fine-tuning. Premise one, the fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design. Premise two, it is not due to physical necessity or chance, three, therefore, it is due to design. Misrepresentation. There was no racial war here. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanites and exterminate them all. What was the command? The command was to drive them out of the land. The land is what is, was and remains so all-important to these Middle Eastern people. And if these Canaanite tribes had simply fled before the advancing armies of Israel, no one would have been killed. There was no command to hunt down the Canaanites, no intention to kill them all off and eliminate them. It was only those who stayed behind to fight that would be killed. And in fact, there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that any women or children were killed. There is no narrative whatsoever that says that anybody other than combatants were killed in this cleansing of the land. And we really don't know how many actually were killed. This was apparently a gradual sort of dispossessing of the land that these tribes our moral duties are constituted by God's commands. So that when he issues commands to us, these become our moral duties. So Israel and the armies of Israel became in effect the instrument by which God judged these Canaanite peoples. The adults deserved the judgment that they received if they stayed behind. Now the more difficult problem is the children. How could God command the children be killed because these are innocent? And I think what I would wanna say there is that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. Children die all the time, every day. People's lives are cut short. God is under no obligation whatsoever to prolong anyone's life another second. So he has the right to give and take life as he chooses. Moreover, if you believe as I do in the salvation of infants or children who die, what that meant was that the death of these children meant their salvation. They were the recipients of an infinite good as a result of their earthly phase of life being terminated. The problem is that people look at this from a naturalistic perspective and think life ends at the grave. But in fact, this was the salvation of these children and would be far better for them than continuing to be raised saying this reprobate Canaanite culture. So I don't think God wronged anybody in commanding this to be done. He didn't wrong the adults because they were deserving of capital punishment. He didn't wrong the children if there were any that were killed, which we don't know, because God has the right to take their lives in fact they were the recipients of a great good. So I don't think there was anybody that was morally wrong in this affair.