Dawkins speaks: Why he won’t debate William Lane Craig … Craig advocates genocide

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 20, 2011

Atheism, Culture, Darwinism, News}

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Here (The Guardian, October 20, 2011). Craig, he says, advocates genocide. Referencing the Hebrew wars recounted in the Old Testament, he quotes Craig,

You might say that such a call to genocide could never have come from a good and loving God. Any decent bishop, priest, vicar or rabbi would agree. But listen to Craig. He begins by arguing that the Canaanites were debauched and sinful and therefore deserved to be slaughtered. He then notices the plight of the Canaanite children.

[See also: Historian: Fool or coward? For Dawkins, that is not an easy choice]

But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel’s part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, ‘You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods’ (Deut 7.3-4). […] God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. […] Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

Do not plead that I have taken these revolting words out of context. What context could possibly justify them?

Hey, wait a minute. If Dawkins did not want to debate Craig because he purportedly advocates genocide, why didn’t he say that up front many months ago?Are we to believe that Dawkins kept this serious accusation under his hat until now?

Surely, it is more likely that he never intended to debate Craig, because he is more used to receiving adulation than critical analysis. And then conveniently someone forwarded him a useful excuse.

Let’s hope Craig’s team offers to debate him on the points he raises, as long as Craig is allowed to raise others later, like the widely doubted plausibility of ultra-Darwinism.

Comments

I know that you guys all worship Craig as much as you say atheists worship Dawkins, but really, you can't bring yourselves to condemn the views he expresses above? It's scary to think that you would (presumably) be prepared to slaughter people if your God commanded you to. KF, all your righteous indignation over your interlocutors debating position (or whatever it is, its never really clear why you get so indignant all the time)and yet you are silent at Craig's moral position? I think Craig needs to check in to a psychiatric institution. I truly believe he is seriously ill.Timbo_{October 20, 2011
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You have your wuss in Dawkins. enjoy.junkdnaforlife_{October 20, 2011
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Wow, just Wow!!!,,, so smart as to consider yourself wiser than almighty God?!? I Suppose you see absolutely no arrogance in that whole line of thinking do you??? But pardon me if I just don't buy your claims for such exceeding wisdom as to judge almighty God, for I am pretty sure you can't even create a single photon of light, much less a entire universe, (or is creating universes something you just don't brag about?) nor can you, in all your self indulgent wisdom, come any where near defeating death and hell.,,, Perhaps, in all your wisdom, you also consider me a fool for sticking with God rather than following you into nihilistic atheism, but alas, that is a scorn I'll gladly suffer the consequences of!!!bornagain77_{October 20, 2011
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...don’t all those unborn babies go to heaven, like the Canaanite babies? Yes, I believe so. That itself should not be cause for any sort of outrage, unless the concept of heaven is itself offensive to you. And fair warning, if you're going to take the "provocative and belittling" approach with me, then you're ceding the moral high ground in regards to offense taken at motive mongering. In addition, if your moral outrage at Christianity can't be contained to these threads in which it is a subject, then polite discussion elsewhere will prove impossible.material.infantacy_{October 20, 2011
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Dr Liddle: You have again tried to appeal to what you have no right to appeal to on your worldview without grounding it. In addition, in the teeth of repeated pointing out of the issues and serious responses that you need to engage before making the sorts of declamations you have been doing all evening, you have been utterly unresponsive. I think a time out is in order, and some reflection on your part. Especially, given the utterly poisonous New Atheist venomous accusatory context of all this. Good evening, Dr Liddle GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 20, 2011
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Was eliminating the Nazis immoral? Why or why not? Were the Nazis eliminated because they were German, and therefore evil, or were the Nazis German, that happened to be doing evil? Were the Canaanites destroyed because they were Canaanites and thus evil, or were the Canaanites destroyed because they were Canaanites engaging in evil? Do we look at WWII as the genocide of Germans and Japanese? Or the genocide of Jews? Was the destruction of the Jews moral or immoral? Was the destruction of the German Nazis moral or immoral?junkdnaforlife_{October 20, 2011
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I haven't read Craig's piece. I'd be more interested in discussing my own views than his in this regard, for the most part. However it doesn't make any sense to debate possible rationale for the Canaanite slaughter with someone who will accept for the sake of argument that it took place, but who won't accept for the sake of the same argument that: God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, that the Bible is His inspired word, and that He created the universe and everything in it, from atom to acorn, and from mathematics to morality; and that concepts like heaven and hell, eternal life, etc., are real, again, even for the sake of argument. It's pointless to argue God's judgment with someone who cannot accept God as judge, and the reality of sin.material.infantacy_{October 20, 2011
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Dr Liddle Pardon, but behind the projection of moral outrage, you are ducking a very important issue that was put to you specifically as a challenge: before you can appeal to objective morality, you have to first ground it on the foundations of your evolutionary materialistic worldview. Otherwise, it becomes little more than a divide and rule tactic, rhetorical manipulation of moral feelings in pursuit of the agendas of the cynically powerful manipulators who willfully play on our moral feelings even while they themselves are rooted in a system of thought that is utterly and irretrievably amoral. In that context, please note that in the above (and in what I just posted), I took time to link a fairly extensive discussion of the relevant issues with onward links to quite serious discussions of the ostensible issues being raised. NONE of these were responded to by you. How must I then understand the sort of tone and assertions being made again and again above? Especially, in the context of the underlying context of Mr Dawkins' behaviour and that of his fellow New Atheists? Do we not see where such poison will end if it is left to fester in our civilisation? Let us stop now, and do better than this. GEM of TKI PS: Dr Liddle, please calm down. Dr Craig is a serious and sober thinker, so I would be very careful indeed about judging him harshly on the strength of a snippet taken out of context by his enemies.kairosfocus_{October 20, 2011
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Unless a thread comes up here.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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I'm happy to discuss abortion, but not on this thread. I might post a piece on my own site.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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I'm morally outraged by abortion, what do you suggest? Of course you're not going to discuss abortion, it's indefensible.material.infantacy_{October 20, 2011
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kairofocus: what is moral about commanding genocide, including the slaughter of innocents, and what is moral about worshipping such a deity? The idea that without religion there is no morality is simply fallacious. What is disturbing to me is that something plainly immoral - genocide, is considered "moral" if sanctioned by God. That seems an extraordinary inversion of morality to me.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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"Objectively, the Canaanite slaughter was evil." How are you determining an evil act? Based on what?junkdnaforlife_{October 20, 2011
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What an odd attitude. Give me a wuss any day.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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"Fear or disgust? I see no reason to conclude “fear”." So a fighter that refuses to fight when called out does so out of disgust, not fear? A wuss is a wuss. Very simple.junkdnaforlife_{October 20, 2011
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Onlookers: Please, observe carefully. Having had a rhetorical gauntlet laid down by an advocate of evolutionary materialism, I have responded above that before materialists have grounds to appeal to objective morality they should first justify it relative to their worldviews. (As well, we should recognise that the fact that we find ourselves inescapably under Moral Government is a strong clue that we live in a world that is under a moral Governor.) These pivotal issues are of course being side-stepped by Mr Dawkins and co in their haste to poison and polarise the atmosphere for discussion. Do they understand what it means to smear people unjustly that they are in effect fascists, nazis and would be mass murderers? That is telling about the root problem: evolutionary materialism is inescapably and destructively amoral and manipulative; even as Plato warned against 2350 years ago. Will Hawthorne is telling:
Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces]. (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action . . . [[We see] therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time. Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from [[a material] 'is'.
In short, materialist atheism is clearly irretrievably amoral. A grim warning. The sharp contradiction between that amorality and the inescapable sense that there is a real right and a real wrong, then highlights that such materialism is in blatant contradiction to something we know about reality that is really important: we have rights, and so also we have moral duties to one another. We are under moral government. When Mr Dawkins' rhetoric of moral outrage is then set against such a backdrop, it takes on a very different colour. It is plainly little more than a vindictive distraction from a fatal flaw in his own system, above and beyond serving as a convenient atmosphere-clouding and- poisoning tactic to escape publicly accounting for the ill-grounded, vitriolic polarising, smearing rhetoric he has spewed forth for decades. So, let us hold that in hand as a chief lesson. And if we then need to deal with the troubling and even disturbing issues on God's warning to and judgement of rebellious and defiant nations, we can then do so -- and, please note the absence of engagement with this as well above after my first linking of it earlier this evening -- in a far more reasonable atmosphere. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 20, 2011
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Isn't it amazing? Perhaps that's because actually they do have "a basis for objective morality". A somewhat better one, IMO, than the subjective choice of a God who commands genocide, and declares that sinful things are not sinful if God commands them. Where is the "objectivity" there? Objectively, the Canaanite slaughter was evil. Atheists can see that. Craig, and apparently some other Christians, can't.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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Yes, I know you did. But I justaposed it with the Canaanite slaughter, as defended by Craig, who is apparently defended by you. But perhaps you don't defend Craig's piece? In which case, I certainly withdraw the implication that you were being inconsistent.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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What I'm disgusted by, material.infantacy, is not "a past event that [I'm] doubtful even took place" but that someone can believe that it not only took place but was commanded by the God he thinks we all ought to worship. And furthermore, that it is quite reasonable to do this, because the Canaanites were wicked, except for the children, and they would have gone to heaven anyway. And as for brutalising the Israelite soldiers, well, life was brutal anyway. Worse still: that a thing that is normally a sin isn't a sin if God commands it. And no thanks, I'm not going to discuss abortion on this thread. I don't know why it even concerns you - after all, don't all those unborn babies go to heaven, like the Canaanite babies? And yes, I'm indignant - morally outraged in fact. Is that a bad thing?Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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It is amazing how atheists that have no basis for objective morality often utilize moral arguments.junkdnaforlife_{October 20, 2011
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If Dawkins is taking the moral high ground not debating WLC, then are the atheist that are standing in less moral than Dawkins?junkdnaforlife_{October 20, 2011
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Also, I juxtaposed judgment with abortion, not the Canaanite slaughter. Please be more careful with your scoldings.material.infantacy_{October 20, 2011
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It makes no sense that you're utterly disgusted about a past event that you're doubtful even took place, and yet apparently have no issue with a currently accepted practice of murder which is incomparably greater in numbers, and capriciousness, and is undoubtedly taking place right under your nose. It's not tu quoque for all those reasons. Care to offer a defense of abortion now, after your righteous indignation, which apparently becoming a habit of yours?material.infantacy_{October 20, 2011
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"And having read that piece on the genocide of the Canaanites (which we must only hope is myth), I wouldn’t want to shake his hand either." Dawkins doesn't need to shake his hand. Nor do you. WLC could care less where you people put your hands. WLC is calling out Dawkins to defend the arguments put forth in the book "God delusion," in Oxford, in front of all Dawkins peers. But Dawkins, like a cockroach, knows how to survive, and is avoiding what would inevitably be a public stomping. Because the goal is not to argue and debate intellectual issues and seek truth, the goal is to sell his ideology anywhere he can with the least resistance.junkdnaforlife_{October 20, 2011
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It's certainly put me off. I had listened to some of his talks and debates, and while I thought they were fallacious, he seemed decent enough. But that piece certainly turned my stomach. But yes, to be honest, I would. And, as Dawkins suggest, I'd take that piece with me. But I won't be given the opportunity. I think he only eats celebs.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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The tu quoque fallacy, eh? So why are we supposed not to "bat an eye" at the holocaust of Canaanite children? Oh yes, because it's all fine, they go straight to heaven, so that's OK then. It's OK to worship a God who demands the slaughter of babies, because atheists slaughter the unborn. Does that make any sense material.infantacy?Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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EL, does your disgust for Craig mean that you won't debate him if given the opportunity?material.infantacy_{October 20, 2011
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Disappointing????!!!!! A "nasty smear job"????!!!!! Those words are Craig's, not Dawkins'! Have you read that piece, kf? Seriously? Including all that stuff commending God for prohibiting miscegenation? There is no "straw man" here, kairosfocus. That piece by Craig is simply appalling. Be honest with yourselves, guys - do you really agree with Craig in that piece? Is that really the God you worship?Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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Let Craig defend it himself (from your link): “By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice. The Canaanites are to be destroyed “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20.18). God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel.”
And that's a defense? And have you read the rest of the piece?
This is not genocide.
Of course it's genocide. Sheesh.
It is about moral judgment. If it were genocide, then God would not later judge Israel. Fail.
Well, that's a circular argument if every I saw one. Fail.
This is about a coward atheist who wrote a book about God and who then refuses to debate about God, (specifically the arguments he set forth in his book) in a scholarly arena in his own backyard because he does not have a sufficient argument to support his arguments.
Or doesn't have the time or stomach to debate a man who worships a God whom he thinks ordered soldiers to slaughter women and children because they were a different race. And Dawkins doesn't "refuse to debate about God". He just refuses to debate Craig.
The same for his minions grayling, and polly t. This is telling. I wonder if it were the Christians hiding under their beds afraid to debate a single atheist, if the propaganda would be the same? Of course it would not be. It would be front page news in London: “Christians afraid to debate enlightened Atheist thinker!”
Fear or disgust? I see no reason to conclude "fear".
Instead we have the opposite. I feel bad for all those that sold their faith based on Dawkins books. The man should at least have the courtesy to argue on their behalf. Instead, it is like the con-man selling snake oil at the county fair, takes your money then grins and scurries away.
He does "argue on their behalf". He just won't debate Craig. And having read that piece on the genocide of the Canaanites (which we must only hope is myth), I wouldn't want to shake his hand either. That piece by Craig is a better argument for atheism than anything Dawkins has ever written.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 20, 2011
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And I'll never understand atheists' moral indignation at the judgment of any sin, who also refuse to bat an eye at the holocaust of abortion.material.infantacy_{October 20, 2011
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