Dawkins refuses to debate Craig

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Richard Dawkins, a man who has made his name by doing very little other than attacking organised religion in various books and at various conferences etc has now point blank refused to debate leading Christian theologian William Lane Craig.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8511931/Richard-Dawkins-ac...

 

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2011/05/richard-dawkins-refuses-to-debate.html

 

He has said in no uncertain terms that Professor Craig ‘is not a figure worthy of his attention and has reportedly said that such a contest would “look good” on his opponent’s CV but not on his own’. He said: “I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self-promotion". Hearing Dawkins criticise someone else over a potential drive for self promotion is the pot calling the kettle the deepest shade of black there is. Dawkins is no longer a professor, has not published anything of scientific substance and has actually become increasingly discredited for his 1970s understanding of genetics, when in reality much in our understanding of the topic has changed. All that has made him famous is regurgitating arguments that most academic theists have ignored because there have been answers to them for centuries. So Dawkins won't debate someone because it won't look good on his CV? Well Sam Harris doesn't seem to think it will. Nor it seems do most of his colleagues, who apparantly are pointing out the increasingly glaring ommission on his CV. It seems to suggest to me an attitude of "la la la I'm not listening" towards Lane Craig, which strikes me as very childish. Is he being reasonable? Or is it all very hypocritical on his part?

[Wayne Dirac]

Yeah, exactly. And if the events you're talking about occur on the edge of an event horizon, and the negative something you create falls into the black hole, then the positive something you created could never recombine with the negative to go back to nothing, and you have now created something out of nothing.

[Fake Crowley]

So if you create enough matter at once, enough to create a black hole, and create enough anti-matter at the same time, then you made a bit more, you could potentially distract the extra bit of anti-matter for long enough with the black hole (Adding anti-matter to a matter filled black hole would, obviously, create nothing, so of course, adding anti-matter to a black hole would not give you free matter) to get it separated from the matter.

 

Or, you could make an anti-matter black hole, and keep it separate from a bunch of matter of the same size but more spread out.

 

Wait.

 

Does matter cancel out anti-energy, and vice versa? Because if not, then you could create a bunch of matter and anti-matter, then convert the matter into energy, thus preventing the two from eating eachothet into nothing.

 

Or not. I'm not good at this sort of thing.

[Wayne Dirac]

Matter is energy, ultimately, so yeah matter cancels out anti-matter. I'm not sure what you are talking about with the creating enough matter to make a black hole and a bunch of anti-matter at the same time bit. Matter/Anti-Matter pairs are literally created all the time in the vacuum of space. Like even as we are typing. All the time. So if they are occuring everywhere all the time in space, then there are some being formed at the edge of an event horizon, and some anti-matter falls in freeing the matter and vice versa. One of the biggest mysteries in physics is why is there apparently more matter than anti-matter in the universe? There had to have been some asymmetry that we can't explain at just after the big bang. It really is quite perplexing.

 

Oh and anti-matter black holes are completely possible, sure. 

[Christiaan Slatman]

Lane Craig has the exact same attitude, besides I've discussed with Dr Craig once and I personally think his Kalam argument and other things aren't true. That's putting it nicely.

 

Even though I agree with Dawkins on a lot of terms, certainly not all. I do think both of them have childish ways of debating and are extremely biased and more trying to win arguments by wooing the public, instead of actually discussing it with arguments. Though I find that Dawkins uses arguments a lot more, especially when you watch Dawkins calmly respond in FOX news, which is difficult not to rage at.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Can you actually demonstrate this?

[boko]

Meh—I'll comment on Kalam.

 

The Kalam argument is at least as wrong as it is right in that the opposite argument can be made:

 

The Kalam Argument for God:
P1. Anything which begins to exist has a cause.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C. The Universe has a cause.  That cause is God, therefore God exists.


The Kalam Argument AGAINST God:
P1: Nothing which exists can cause something which does not exist to begin existing. 
P2: Given (1), Anything which begins to exist was not caused to do so by something which exists. 
P3: The universe began to exist.
P4: Given (2) and (3), the universe was not caused to exist by anything which exists. 
P5: God caused the universe to begin to exist. 
C1: Given (4) and (5), God does not exist.

 

The point should really be this:

We do not (yet?) understand quantum mechanics enough to comprehend how the universe could have started and thinking in our own common sense assumptions and logic (something can only simultaneously occupy 1 location, time is linear, space is 3 dimensions) may not be effective at answering every question of the universe.

 

But still, even if the quantum aspect is ignored and this is regarded as true:

P1. Anything which begins to exist has a cause.
P2. The universe began to exist.

C. The Universe has a cause. 

 

It's an incorrect conclusion that there is a God to have caused the universe, let alone that the particular God would have been the God of any branch Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

The problem with your Kalam argument against God is that it makes a fundimental mistake. If God created the universe, then it stands to reason he also was outside of it. Therefore, he is outside of time (time being a part of the universe) therefore he does not need to have a starting point in the same way the universe does. The Kalam argument applies to the universe itself and everything in it, but it cannot comment on that which time does not control.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Ok, it says Matt Hawkins has posted, but I see no post.

[God ~blogs admin ~]

Wait, I'm sure I read that wrong but what I took from it was...

God is outside of time and space.
Therefore, god is not inflicted as we and the universe is.
God is the nothingness.
Therefore, nothingness created the universe.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Why does "Therefore, god is not inflicted as we and the universe is." then move to "God is the nothingness."?

[God ~blogs admin ~]

Well, if god is not in our realm, and there is no way to actually tell what god is. We could simply say the great nothingness created the universe. Because, if he is outside of our universe, he's a big bag of nothing in regards to our happenings here and now. Again, I probably just read it wrong, but that sounds so daft in my head.

[boko]

You're saying that the Kalam argument has no need to be logical in order to be a good argument, but arguments against the Kalam argument do.  The whole point of the Kalam argument against god is that it's illogical, acting as satire of the Kalam argument for the existence of god, because, as I'll reiterate: It's an incorrect conclusion that the thing which started the universe is god, let alone that the particular God would have been the God of any branch of a particular religion.

 

The very idea of using anything but characteristics of faith to argue for faith is misguided.