Tag Archives: Daniel Dennett

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Video of William Lane Craig explaining the Kalam cosmological argument

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This is the video from his appearance at Saddleback Church (Rick Warren) that got such a big response. Saddleback is a pretty ordinary church, which lots of people with different levels of knowledge. How did Bill explain the Kalam argument to so many different ordinary people?

Watch and see!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

    You can also find a more technical version of the lecture here. This version is based on a research paper published in an astrophysics journal, and was delivered to an audience of students and faculty, including atheist physicist Victor Stenger and prominent atheist philosopher Michael Tooley, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Craig has previously debated Stenger and Tooley. And they both asked him questions in the Q&A of this lecture.

    You might also be interested in this exchange in which William Lane Craig takes on prominent atheist Daniel Dennett.

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    News

    MUST-SEE: Cowardly Richard Dawkins explains why he won’t debate William Lane Craig

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    Richard Dawkins explains why he will not debate William Lane Craig. (Posted by ChristianJR4, H/T Brian Auten of Apologetics 315)

    Let’s re-cap Dawkins’ reasons in point form: (with my comments in parentheses)

    • Dawkins claims that he is willing to debate high-ranking clergymen (but Craig is a scholar, not a clergyman)
    • Dawkins claims that Craig is a creationist (but Craig supports his kalam cosmological argument with the Big Bang)
    • Dawkins claims that Craig’s only claim to fame is that he is a professional debater (but see Craig’s CV and publications below, which is far more prestigious than Dawkins)
    • Dawkins claims that he’s too busy (busy cowering in fear hugging his Darwin doll for comfort)

    Let’s review William Lane Craig’s qualifications:

    William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

    Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity… In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.

    He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.

    Craig’s CV is here.

    Craig’s list of publications is here.

    Here are some of Craig’s most recent publications:

    From 2007:

    • Ed. with Quentin Smith. Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007, 302 pp.
    • “Theistic Critiques of Atheism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, pp. 69-85. Ed. M. Martin. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
    • “The Metaphysics of Special Relativity: Three Views.” In Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity, pp. 11-49. Ed. Wm. L. Craig and Quentin Smith. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007.
    • “Creation and Divine Action.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, pp. 318-28. Ed. Chad Meister and Paul Copan. London: Routledge, 2007.

    From 2008:

    • God and Ethics: A Contemporary Debate. With Paul Kurtz. Ed. Nathan King and Robert Garcia. With responses by Louise Antony, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, John Hare, Donald Hubin, Stephen Layman, Mark Murphy, and Richard Swinburne. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.
    • “Time, Eternity, and Eschatology.” In The Oxford Handbook on Eschatology, pp. 596-613. Ed. J. Walls. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

    From 2009:

    • Ed. with J. P. Moreland. Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell.
    • “The Kalam Cosmological Argument.” With James Sinclair. In Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Ed. Wm. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland. Oxford: Blackwell.
    • “In Defense of Theistic Arguments.” In The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue. Ed. Robert Stewart. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

    Forthcoming:

    • “The Cosmological Argument.” In Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues. Ed. Paul Copan and Chad Meister. Cambridge: Blackwell.
    • “Cosmological Argument”; “Middle Knowledge.” In The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology. Ed. G. Fergusson et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • “Divine Eternity.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. Ed. Thomas Flint and Michael Rea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Richard Dawkins is eminently qualified to debate uninformed clergymen, but he has too much at stake (in terms of book royalties) to disappoint his loyal horde of foam-flecked fundies by debating a professional scholar who has debated hundreds of times, against the top non-Christian scholars, in hundreds of universities, including Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford.

    See that debate up there with Daniel Dennett? You can listen to Craig’s response to Daniel Dennett here. Or you can watch Craig’s debate with Christopher Hitchens. Then you’ll know why Dawkins soils his knickers at the thought of facing Craig in a public debate.

    What are the real reasons why he won’t debate Craig?

    I can think of three reasons why Dawkins would avoid a debate with Craig:

    1. He doesn’t know how to defend atheism and disprove theism in public
    2. He doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to understand logic and study evidence
    3. He doesn’t want to debate a real scholar and be humiliated in public, like Hitchens and Dennett

    My opinion is that he is guilty of all 3 of these.

    If you are an atheist, you should be ashamed to be represented by a LAZY, IGNORANT COWARD like Richard Dawkins.

    Previous posts on Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists

    Podcasts

    MUST-LISTEN: William Lane Craig takes on prominent atheist Daniel Dennett

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    This audio records a part of the Greer-Heard debate in 2007, between prominent atheist Daniel Dennett and lame theistic evolutionist Alister McGrath. Craig was one of the respondents, and this was the best part of the event. It is a little bit advanced, but I have found that if you listen to things like this over and over with your friends and family, and then try to explain it to non-Christians, you’ll get it.

    By the way, this is mostly original material from Craig, dated 2007, and he delivers the speech perfectly, so it’s entertaining to listen to.

    Craig presents three arguments for a Creator and Designer of the universe:

    • the contingency argument
    • the kalam cosmological argument
    • the teleological argument

    He also discusses Dennett’s published responses to these arguments.

    Dennett’s response to Craig’s paper

    Here is my snarky paraphrase of Dennett’s reponse: (I haven’t been snarky all day!)

    • Craig’s three arguments are bulletproof, the premises are plausible, and grounded by the best cutting edge science we know today.
    • I cannot find anything wrong with his arguments right now, but maybe later when I go home it will come to me what’s wrong with them.
    • But atheism is true even if all the evidence is against it today. I know it’s true by my blind faith.
    • The world is so mysterious, and all the science of today will be overturned tomorrow so that atheism will be rational again. I have blind faith that this new evidence will be discovered any minute.
    • Just because the cause of the beginning of time is eternal and the cause of the beginning of space is non-physical, the cause doesn’t have to be God.
    • “Maybe the cause of the universe is the idea of an apple, or the square root of 7”. (HE LITERALLY SAID THAT!)
    • The principle of triangulation might have brought the entire physical universe into being out of nothing.
    • I don’t understand anything about non-physical causation, even though I cannot even speak meaningful sentences unless I have a non-physical mind that is causing my body to emit the meaningful sentences in a non-determined manner.
    • Alexander Vilenkin is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.
    • Alan Guth is much smarter than Craig and if he were here he would beat him up good with phantom arguments.
    • This science stuff is so complicated to me – so Craig can’t be right about it even though he’s published about it and debated it all with the best atheists on the planet.
    • If God is outside of time, then this is just deism, not theism. (This part is correct, but Craig believes that God enters into time at the moment of creation – so that it is not a deistic God)
    • If deism is true, then I can still be an atheist, because a Creator and Designer of the universe is compatible with atheism.
    • I’m pretty sure that Craig doesn’t have any good arguments that can argue for Christianity – certainly not an historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus based on minimal facts, that he’s defended against the most prominent historians on the planet in public debates and in prestigous books and research journals.

    I was in the second row at the Baylor Conference on intelligent design when Guth debated Craig on the origin of the universe. Guth admitted afterwards that the universe did require a cause.

    I do not recommend purchasing the whole 2007 debate, because McGrath is a squish. You’re better off with the 2005 and 2008 sets. The 2006 one is OK, but not great. I don’t have the 2009 one yet, but it looks good.