Friday, October 21, 2011

On Engaging the Real Arguments

I disagree pretty strongly with Craig's way of defending such things as the ban on the Amalekites. At the same time, if I refused to engage anyone who held a position that I considered to be morally repugnant, there probably aren't going to be a whole lot of people to talk to.

I don't really have trouble with the idea of Dawkins refusing to debate Craig, if, for example, he thought that the sort of timed debate that Craig excels at would be a bad venue for him. The problem is that his work attacks religious belief but never comes to grips with such things as the Kalam Cosmological argument, or some of the other arguments Craig uses.

It's one thing to be poorly informed about theology. It is another thing to be poorly informed about the kinds of arguments that are used to defend belief in the existence of God.

Dawkins makes the claim that the theist is delusional, by which I take it he means that the case against theism is overwhelming. Yet he doesn't, in any serious way, engage any of the arguments in natural theology, and he seems to imply that it is beneath him to engage leading defenders of belief in the existence of God, and their arguments. I don't care whether he does it in a debate format or some other format, but somewhere, somehow, he needs to show that he knows how the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Thomistic Cosmological Argument restrict the class of what needs a cause, so that a simplistic "Who made God" can't refute them in any direct way.

Craig is a leading defender of arguments for the existence of God. Regardless of whether some of his statements are morally repugnant, Dawkins needs to come to terms with him and those like him if he is to have any credibility with respect to his delusion charges. Putting his nose in the air with the "Courtier's Reply" does not replace confronting the actual relevant arguments.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dawkins has stated his admiration for Peter Singer. Peter Singer endorses, among other things, infanticide.

Dawkins is not refusing to debate Craig because Craig is unknown, or Craig's defense of the ban on the Amalekites, and everyone knows it. Even atheists know it.

Dawkins refuses to debate Craig because Craig has intellectually curb-stomped Harris, Hitchens and Dennett in debate already. Dawkins did poorly against Lennox, who isn't nearly as effective as Craig. So Dawkins realizes that the most likely outcome of any debate he would have with Craig would be "DAWKINS DEFEATED" headlines.

Dawkins even implies this when he talks about how the debate would look great on Craig's CV. Do you think it would look good if Dawkins thrashed Craig? Of course not. But if the world's most well known atheist didn't destroy one of the most prolific and credentialed Christian apologists, Craig's CV would look better and the CV of Dawkins would look worse.

Let's stop pretending that Dawkins is giving excuses that have any basis in reality. No one, not even the new atheists, believe his excuses. Everyone, including the new atheists, know why he's running from Craig. Dawkins isn't even considered by his fans to be giving great arguments against God anymore. He is a mascot and a guy who can work stirring sentences. Little else.

Papalinton said...

What's the difference between "theology" and "natural theology'?

Papalinton said...

" It is another thing to be poorly informed about the kinds of arguments that are used to defend belief in the existence of God."

How can one be poorly informed about the existence of a non-being? It seems to me the unknowable is indistinguishable to the non-existent.

Victor Reppert said...

Theology in general allows the existence of God, and even Christian revelation. So it is an attempt to understand the implications of Christianity from inside, as it were. Natural theology, on the other hand, attempts to argue for the existence of God without assuming God's existence to begin with. So, for example, a cosmological argument begins from some fact about the world (it began to exist) and attempts to establish that it was brought into existence by something other than itself. The argument from reason, for example, maintains that it is incoherent to argue that human beings can reason about the world if in fact the ultimate causes of the universe are non-rational.

Victor Reppert said...

Even if God does not exist, one can be poorly informed about the kinds of evidence that are proffered to show that he does. One could nevertheless misrepresent the arguments.

Anonymous said...

Yes and people who are well informed of the content of those arguments aren't going to take seriously any bad polemic of them by some know-nothing twit.

Anonymous said...

Victor, any chance of a separate post on how you would defend difficult passages of the OT?

Papalinton said...

"Let's stop pretending that Dawkins is giving excuses that have any basis in reality. "

I do know they are based in reality because he said so. WLC is a blowhard whose debating days are almost finished as people begin to see through the weasel-wording that comprises his rhetoric.

Anonymous said...

I do know they are based in reality because he said so.

Dawkins ain't lying, this I know
For his website tells me so

Papalinton said...

Who says the the ultimate causes of the universe are non-rational?

I don't
Science doesn't.
Lack of knowledge is not synonymous with non-rational.
But most reasonable people do know that religion is irrational, a secondary function of human ideation that appropriated our genetic predisposition to imagine or suppose teleological intentionality, [even among the most mundane of everyday occurrences], the primary function for which was our evolutionary development of survival mechanisms. The brain is hardwired as a detection agency so that we imagined danger, a lion in the bush that was rustling in order that we didn't get eaten that day and improved our chances to reproduce our genes. As we developed from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement, and the prospect of being eaten by a lion or a tiger became less a possibility, our teleological and survival predisposition turned its focus on wider questions of existence, and it is during this transition period that homo sapiens began filling their heads with spirits and ghosts and gods and other things that go bump in the night, away from the immediacy of clear and present danger as in earlier times.

The conjuring of gods and spirits and the like is simply a transitional phase in human maturation, the development of which is now being addressed through the sciences as the primary vehicle for knowledge, information and understanding, and its capacity for greater explanatory power, passes to it from theology/religion. Religion was humanity's first attempt at explanations about people, the environment, about nature, the universe. Science has now superseded it.

This is the real argument for discourse and investigation, not some goose-chase after a disembodied numen at the bottom of the garden of eden.

Per Ove said...

@ Papalinton
Well, you seem to say that belief in ghosts = untrue = supernatural, and then you seem to turn this around to say all supernatural = belief in ghosts = untrue.

IlĂ­on said...

Per Ove,
The Dingo is a fool -- this is not a claim that he is an idiot (else, I'd have used that word); this is the claim that he is intellectually dishonest. So, of course, he will "argue" in that manner and will continue to do so after the nature of his "argument" is, once again, publicly explained.

Papalinton said...

Per Ove
"@ Papalinton
Well, you seem to say that belief in ghosts = untrue = supernatural, and then you seem to turn this around to say all supernatural = belief in ghosts = untrue."

Yep.
Just like:

6 + 2 = 3 + 5 and
5 + 3 = 2 + 6

No matter which way you turn the elements around they still accord.

Anonymous said...

Would like to see a well thought out response to Papalinton