Historian: Fool or coward? For Dawkins, that is not an easy choice

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 21, 2011

Atheism, Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, News}

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Further to “Dawkins speaks: Why he won’t debate William Lane Craig … Craig advocates “ genocide”

In “Richard Dawkins is either a fool or a coward for refusing to debate William Lane Craig” (The Telegraph, October 21, 2011), historian Tim Stanley offers,

He likes to pick fights either with dunces (like the deliciously silly and obviously gay Ted Haggard) or with incredibly nice old Christians with no fire in their belly (like Rowan Williams). Dawkins has gotten away with his illiterate, angry schtick for so many years because his opponents have been so woolly. This is a damning indictment not only of him, but of the clerical establishment of Great Britain. But this time, he understood that he was up against a pro. In America, evangelicals have to compete in a vibrant, competitive marketplace of different denominations. That breeds the very guile and theatricality that are so sorely lacking among the Anglican clergy. In Craig, Dawkins met his match. Like Jonah, he was confronted by the truth and he ran away.

Stanley provides critical context for Craig’s treatment of Old Testament slaughters.

Craig’s purpose in writing this piece is to unravel the paradox of a moral Bible that also includes lashings of apparently random violence. Craig stresses that these passages of the Bible are difficult for us to read because we are not of the age in which they are written – they are just as alien to us as Beowulf or the Iliad. That’s because Christian society has been shaped by the rules of life outlined in the New Testament, not in the section of The Bible in which this massacre occurs. Far from using this passage to celebrate the slaughter of heathen, Craig is making the point that the revelation of God’s justice has changed over time.

Which is pretty much the standard view.

It’s hard to figure out why Dawkins, who holds forth regularly on religion, would not know that. Or …

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Comments

In 2000, for women whose weeks of gestation at the time of abortion were adequately reported, 57% of reported legal induced abortions were known to have been obtained at <8 weeks of gestation, and 87% at <13 weeks. Overall, 23% of abortions were known to have been performed at 21 weeks
http://www.policyalmanac.org/culture/archive/abortion_statistics.shtmlElizabeth Liddle_{October 22, 2011
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JunkDNAforlife made this statement in his previous post. "The resurrection of Jesus commands Christians to never stone women in any situation, ever." I'm just wondering where he got it from.Bantay_{October 22, 2011
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"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"CannuckianYankee_{October 22, 2011
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markf, If you say so. But I have to say that it doesn't really surprise me that that modern pagans (i.e. atheistic secular humanists who slaughter their unborn children by the millions, in many cases even unborn children who are near full term) would be so outraged at the destruction of an ancient culture where they also slaughtered THEIR children! http://carm.org/christianity/miscellaneous-topics/moloch-ancient-pagan-god-child-sacrificewgbutler_{October 22, 2011
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Elizabeth, I don't regard Craig's reasoning as ludicrous. I'm not saying that I agree with it outright, but on the surface it seems plausible and I'd have to think about all possibile ramifications before I completely endorsed the argument. Right off the bat, I can think of a few scenarios where that reasoning alone wouldn't suffice, so I might add a few things to it, but that's not to say that the basic argument is flawed, only that it might be incomplete. I realize that to your atheistic way of thinking some of this might be strange, but for the benefit of other readers allow me to point out an example of divine command theory being extremely valid. In Genesis 22 God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering. On the surface this seems like an abhorrent command (imagine killing and sacrificing a young child, especially your only child), what could be more heinous? Nevertheless, Abraham, realizing that God was the supreme Authority, obeyed the command, rather than taking the Elizabeth Liddle approach. Scriptures in the New Testament (Hebrews 11:17) COMMEND Abraham for obeying God and also tell us that Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead. This was God's final test, so to speak, of whether or not He would use Abraham as the ancestral forbear of the lineage through which the Messiah would come and all the nations of the Earth would ultimately be blessed. It was also a picture of the most beautiful act in history when God would eventually sacrifice His own Son for the redemption of humanity. Essentially, this one story is at the very core of both Judaism and Christianity. The point being that only God knows all possible realities and what the future holds. Things that God does or commands might not make any sense in the immediate present, but when you consider what will happen hundreds or even thousands of years down the road make alot of sense. God Warned the Israelites time after time not to intermingle with the pagans in their area or to adopt their ways. He knew that if they did this ("tolerated" paganism, if you will) they would eventually become weak and it would be a cancer that would ultimately destroy their nation (which it did). We see this same phenonemena happening over and over again in our modern societies, especially western nations like the United Kingdom and the United States. At any rate, pointing to this philosophical reasoning as an excuse to duck a debate really comes across as a grasping of straws. If this reaasoning is really so absurdly backwards and indefensible, Dawkins owes it to the atheistic community and world at large to show up and expose Craig for the moral monster that he is. But of course we both know that this isn't the REAL reason why Dawkins isn't showing up, don't we?wgbutler_{October 22, 2011
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That's probably true. You have to go back a bit to get Christian inspired genocide - which naturally involved killing less people because there were less people around and inferior technology for killing them. However, whatever anti-christian regimes may have done it is not relevant to the problem that the Bible appears to say that God sometimes recommends genocide. So either: * The Bible is sometimes wrong * We are misinterpeting what the Bible says - but is pretty explicit - at least in the English translations * God sometimes tells people to do evil things * Genocide is not always evil Take you pick! But don't try to distract by talking about how atheists are sometimes evil or don't have an objective basis for morality.markf_{October 22, 2011
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JunkDNAforlife....whoops. I meant to say "how does the resurrection command Christians to never stone a woman?" is there a scripture for that?Bantay_{October 22, 2011
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JunkDNAforlife....how exactly does the resurrection command women to be silent?Bantay_{October 22, 2011
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You mean, "learn the first rule by which some Christian apologists distinguish between cherries"? Did you note that one of NormO's examples was from the New Testament? Or does Paul not count?Elizabeth Liddle_{October 22, 2011
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I am not attempting to fool anyone, wgbutler. I simply followed the link in the Dawkins piece, and found myself in an essay by Craig in which he claims, inter alia, that a a wrong thing is not a wrong thing if commanded by God:
So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong. On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but which is now morally obligatory in virtue of that command.
To me, that is a clear reductio ad absurdum: if "divine command theory" leads to the conclusion that "an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin" is "morally obligatory" if divinely commanded, to me that says that "divine command theory" must be wrong. Even in its own terms. If there is an "objective morality", then something doesn't change from wrong to right merely because some deity says that wrong is right. I am certainly not "demanding that a Christian apologist condemn and forswear large segments of scripture before supposedly having the opportunity to engage in a debate" - that would be as foolish, IMO, as the demand made by people here, that I, as an atheist, provide the basis of my moral philosophy before having the right to critique a Christian's moral philosophy. It is possible to see that a conclusion is clearly wrong before having in place the reasoning that leads to a correct conclusion, as any mathematician can tell you. What I doing is challenging the Christians here, especially those who seem to regard Craig as their champion, to justify what seems to me a self-evidently ludicrous bit of reasoning by Craig.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 22, 2011
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Yes, Norm needs to learn the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. So do a lot of accusers.IRQ Conflict_{October 21, 2011
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Two of those are old testament. -_-Sonfaro_{October 21, 2011
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Norm, by picking out those passages, you are (I'm assuming) arguing for the sake of your position, that the God of the bible is true. Therefore, the resurrection of Jesus must also be, for the sake of argument, assumed to be true. This then, changes the game. It is not a cherry-pick quote-mine fest anymore. The resurrection of Jesus commands Christians to never stone women in any situation, ever. And since the most competent, loyal and trusted among him was likely the two Mary's, then based on what Jesus taught, and grounding his authority in the resurrection event, women being silent in Church would then seem ridiculous.junkdnaforlife_{October 21, 2011
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wgbutler:
The Judeo-Christian scriptures are a package deal. We don’t get to be politically correct and pick and choose which passages we like and are valid and which ones are not valid.
So you obviously don't wear cloth woven of two different kinds of material? (Leviticus 19:19) And you must agree that women should be silent in church right? (Corinthians 14:34). And of course you fully support that a woman who is found not to be a virgin on her wedding night should be stoned to death right? (Deuteronomy 22:20,21) I could go on but seriously, you don't think that modern Christianity picks and chooses? Give me a break.NormO_{October 21, 2011
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Hi everyone.. I'm new to posting but have been reading the articleson this site for quite sometime and I ppreciate all the hard work you folks do at UD, keep up the good work. Hi Elizabeth I thought I would attempt a reply to your post, so here it goes.. No one is saying you can’t be an atheist with morals. I would suggest that if naturalism is true, it would be ridiculous for anyone holding to such a worldview, to denounce war or genocide. It wouldn’t matter what values you decide to choose, because right and wrong would not exist, along with good and evil. Someone like Dawkins who is in the opinion that genocide is wrong, has no more validity than those who thought the genocide was a good thing. People like Dawkins never cease to amaze me, they’re always condemning God to be morally wrong in his actions, yet at the same time, stand by and claim that the abortions of millions and millions of babies is morally acceptable.KRock_{October 21, 2011
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Genocide is wrong because it violates a pretty fundamental ethical precept that you should treat others as as you would wish to be treated. Most of the recent examples of genocide that I can think of were carried out by atheistic regimes extremely hostile to Christianity. (Hitler hated Christianity and often described it as a scourge on humanity).wgbutler_{October 21, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle, You and Dawkins aren't fooling anyone. What's going on here with the sanctimonious behavior and selective outrage is nothing more than an attempt to distract from the rather embarrassing fact that Dawkins is running away from a prime opportunity to debate a person whom many consider to be the prime apologist for Christianity like a little chihuahua with his tail between his legs. And what's Dawkins excuse for not debating Stephen Meyer? Michael Behe? He's a coward whose ideas and worldview can't stand up to rigorous scrutinity. You do realize that the Bible is replete with descriptions of divine justice? We have scriptures describing a worldwide flood in which all of humanity except for 8 people are wiped out. We have descriptions of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. King David's child with Bathsheba died as a punishment for their adulterous liason. The Israelites were conquered and carried away into captivity. Ananias and Saphira fell dead when they liked to the Apostle Peter about their donations to the church. The wicked are ultimately cast into hell. The Judeo-Christian scriptures are a package deal. We don't get to be politically correct and pick and choose which passages we like and are valid and which ones are not valid. If we gutted the Bible in this way we wouldn't end up with anything resembling Judeo-Christian theology and would only have an Oprah like feel good whatever makes you happy belief system. Demanding that a Christian apologist condemn and forswear large segments of scripture before supposedly having the opportunity to engage in a debate is unreasonable and nothing more than a cheap parlor trick intended to distract from the cowardice of the atheist.wgbutler_{October 21, 2011
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Do you understand why Winston Churchill and Harry Truman were not tried for genocide based on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Do you understand why, if the Canaanite culture was based on ritual child sacrifice, that it needed to be destroyed? Do you understand that the Canaanite children were victims of their parents evils, the choices their parents made, *the free will of their parents*, and not God? Do you understand that if you decide to develop a culture where throwing live children into a fire and watching them burn to death as their muffled cries of terror go unanswered, becomes a common routine that you should be destroyed?junkdnaforlife_{October 21, 2011
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Really? Do we have to go through this again? You may get sick and tired of the assumption that atheists have no morality. No one ever says any such thing. What we are saying, and this you must accept is true, is the atheists have no objective basis for their morality. If you can't see the difference between those statements, I must conclude that you are foolish.JDH_{October 21, 2011
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Craig's view appears to be that it's OK as long as God commands it. A sin is only a sin if it is against a divine commandment.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 21, 2011
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This pernicious assumption that atheists have no morality is becoming extremely tiresome, and a smokescreen it seems to me behind which to avoid addressing serious problems with Craig's apologetic. Genocide is wrong because it violates a pretty fundamental ethical precept that you should treat others as as you would wish to be treated. You don't need a god to tell you that, you just need to be human. In fact on current showing, humans are more reliable than the available gods.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 21, 2011
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Given your worldview Nick, how is genocide EVER wrong? Animals kill each other all the time, don't they? And we don't take then to court. Or are some animals more equal than other animals?Christian-apologetics.org_{October 21, 2011
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The Bible in which this massacre occurs. Far from using this passage to celebrate the slaughter of heathen, Craig is making the point that the revelation of God’s justice has changed over time.
Which is pretty much the standard view.
Really? It's the standard view that genocide is bad now, but was OK back then?NickMatzke_UD_{October 21, 2011
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BA77, it's so obvious to me that Dawkins only debates when he thinks he can clearly win. The guy is a coward and a bully. You won't ever see him on the stage with William Lane Craig or Stephen Meyer, but he'll go after people like Wendy Wright. I guess that on some level, he realizes that his arguments are horribly deficient and this is why he avoids skilled opponents in much the same way that Dracula avoids sunlight.wgbutler_{October 21, 2011
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How dare you to pick on someone who would rather pick on children, with his new book of Darwinian fairy tales, than to debate a full grown theist.bornagain77_{October 21, 2011
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