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20111019 UPDATE: Richard Dawkins responds to the Empty Chair!
Dawkins defends decision not to debate apologist William Lane Craig
For more information:
http://www.premier.org.uk/craig
http://www.bethinking.org/the-reasonable-faith-tour-2011/
Note to professional inkers who may be reading: I’m sorry. I will go buy some new pens tomorrow.
Craig offers Dawkins nothing. Dawkins offers Craig legitimacy. Craig’s talk has been refuted and refuted and refuted but he just carries on saying the same wrong things in his stump talk and addresses none of the very legitimate criticisms so many have raised. Your empty chair metaphor properly belongs in Craig’s head.
Tildeb, your comment is pure dogma. I have seen atheists post it hundreds of times without ever citing one single source to back up their claims of Craig being refuted. It’s pathetic and desperate.
Further, Dawkins offers Craig no legitimacy at all, as Craig has been an authority on the subject for far longer than Dawkins and actually has academic publications, rather than just popular-level books, to back his case.
Dawkins should be flattered that Craig takes his layman philosophy seriously (citation: look up Craig’s lecture response to Dawkins on YouTube and Dawkins’s Delusion… THAT’s how you do it)!
Correct me if I’m wrong tildeb but didn’t Dawkins refuse to debate Craig saying that he has no interest in the topic. (It seemed that it was something like that.) Doesn’t that seem odd that he’d say something like that after writing a book called The God Delusion?
Also, if you could, could you give us an example of the “the same wrong things in his stump talk”?
After hearing Craig on a recent episode of the Unbelievable radio show, I thought he was pretty open to any criticism. Most of the questions that the host, Justin Brierly, asked him were written by atheists. (It was what inspired this cartoon.) Listen to it here:
http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={BBBB39AC-EDFF-4991-8B12-DDD46E0CEED5}
“Craig offers Dawkins nothing. Dawkins offers Craig legitimacy.”
Not true. Craig is already legitimate, just look at the types of people he has elsewhere debated. You are either ignorant of this fact, or not, and if not, then you’re a liar.
“Craig’s talk has been refuted and refuted and refuted but he just carries on saying the same wrong things in his stump talk and addresses none of the very legitimate criticisms so many have raised. ”
Not true. There have been some good objections to Dr. Craig’s arguments, but as yet nothing that is an actual defeater of the arguments. Also, more often than not, Craig’s arguments aren’t even addressed in the debates he has, most opponents seem to avoid most of them most of the time. Instead, angry tirades against religion and God seem to be the main arguments against Dr. Craig. Angry tirades, an argument does not make. You need to learn this lesson too, based on your own angry tirades I’ve seen here. Yes, there are objections to Dr. Craig’s arguments, but not defeaters, and Dr Craig has certainly responded to those objections, EG particles popping into existence from the quantum vacuum. Isn’t it obvious what you’re doing here? Do I need to spell out what’s going on with you?
“Your empty chair metaphor properly belongs in Craig’s head.”
Wow. Go see a doctor and take some chill pills.
Dawkins (and apparently tildeb) continually tries to act like Craig is using him to make a name for himself. He seems blissfully unaware of the fact that Craig has made a name not as a debater but as one of the world’s foremost experts on metaphysics related to time, not to mention as an extremely famous philosopher of religion–in large part due to popularizing the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The debates, for Craig, are but a part of his notoriety, and the most insignificant part, if you ask me.
More likely, Dawkins is scared stiff after seeing the absolute trouncing Craig gave Sam Harris in their debate.
[...] The World’s First Talking Chair Shows Up in the UK- one of my favorite websites, No Apologies Allowed, has recently featured a comic on Dawkins’ failure to man up and meet William Lane Craig in a debate on the existence of God. Given the absolute trouncing Craig gave to Dawkins’ buddy, Sam Harris, it’s not surprising Dawkins is hiding as far from this debate as possible. [...]