Tag Archives: Religion

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Where’s Dawkins? Debating or promoting his books to his gullible followers?

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Where's Dawkins?
BirdieUpon asks: Where's Dawkins?

So the top defender of Christianity operating today is going to be doing a speaking/debating tour of the UK. The organizers have asked Richard Dawkins to come out and defend atheism, but Dawkins is not willing to discuss atheism with anyone who isn’t… already an atheist.

What is Dawkins doing instead of debating?

From BirdieUpon’s blog. (H/T Apologetics 315)

Excerpt:

Craig has not sought to debate Dawkins. He’s responded to invitations from independent organisations who have tried to set this up – in fact he’s never set up a single debate, himself, in his life!

Best of all, Dawkins will actually be spending October… self-promoting! He’ll be charging around the country and in TV studios plugging his new book The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True! In fact, Dawkins will be promoting it in the Royal Albert Hall on October 19th, while Craig is in Cambridge delivering a lecture on Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design.

Dawkins’ calendar, on his website, indicates that October 25th (the night of Dawkins’ challenge to fill Oxford Sheldonian Theatre’s empty debating chair) is free for him. It also, however, mentions a movie-screening in New York, so one hopes Dawkins isn’t planning on fleeing the country!

William Lane Craig’s speaking and debating tour of the UK is almost upon us, and now might be a good time to review some of his debates.

Dr. Craig normally debates two topics: 1) Does God exist? and 2) Did Jesus rise from the dead?

Does God Exist?

For the question of God’s existence, he uses 5 arguments.

You can see them being used in this debate against Christopher Hitchens:

Did Jesus Rise from the dead?

For the question of Jesus’ resurrection, he uses 1 argument based on four “minimal facts”, which are all accepted by the majority of scholars.

You can see them being used in this debate against Bart Ehrman:

If you watch both of these, that should prepare you for the news of the UK debates when it comes out. The tour starts on October 17th and will go until October 26th. You can learn more about Dr. Craig from this radio interview that he just did on the Unbelievable radio show, with Justin Brierley.

News

Announcing the Reasonable Faith 2011 UK tour with Dr. William Lane Craig

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And here’s the schedule:

The details of the tour are still being arranged, and the schedule below will be updated as events are finalised.

Monday 17th October 2011
7.30pm “Does God Exist?“
Public Debate with Stephen Law, lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, London and Editor of the magazine of the Royal Institute of Philosophy THINK. Arranged by Premier Radio.
Westminster Central Hall, Storeys Gate, London, SW1H 9NH

Tuesday 18th October 2011 **NEW**
12.30 Student Lecture “The Evidence for God”
Pippard Lecture Theatre (Sherfield Building), Imperial College London (South Kensington Campus), Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ
Refreshments from 12.00. Start promptly at 12.30.
We hope this event will be webstreamed to the world – details will be announced here on bethinking.org when available.

Wednesday 19th October 2011
7.30pm Public lecture on Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design followed by a panel response
St. Andrew the Great, Cambridge

Thursday 20th October 2011
7.30pm Debate at the Cambridge Union: “This House Believes that God is not a Delusion”
Proposing the motion: William Lane Craig and Peter S. Williams
Opposing the motion: Arif Ahmed and Andrew Copson
The Cambridge Union, Cambridge
[N.B. This event is open only to members of the Cambridge Union]

Friday 21st October 2011
7.30pm “Does God Exist?“
Debate with Professor Peter Millican, Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford University
The Great Hall, Birmingham University, Edgbaston, B15 2TT

Saturday 22nd October 2011
9.30am – 5.30pm Bethinking National Apologetics Day Conference
Westminster Chapel, London
Opening and closing lectures from William Lane Craig
Further lectures from Gary Habermas, John Lennox and Peter J. Williams

Sunday 23rd October 2011

Monday 24th October 2011
7.30pm Lecture “The Historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection”
Southampton Guildhall, Southampton SO14 7LP

Tuesday 25th October 2011
7.30pm Lecture “Is God a Delusion?” A Critique of Dawkins’ The God Delusion
[or a debate with Richard Dawkins if he should accept the invitation]
Sheldonian Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3AZ

Wednesday 26th October 2011
7.30pm “Does God Exist?”
Debate with Dr Peter Atkins, former Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University
University Place Lecture Theatre, Manchester University, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL

“Why isn’t there more of this kind of thing being preached from church pulpits?  If there were, I’d go more often and I’d stay awake during the sermon!”
Comment from a self-confessed irregular churchgoer during the 2007 Reasonable Faith Tour.

N.B. All the events will be recorded and will eventually become available to the public.

I note that Craig will be facing Arif Ahmed and Peter Atkins again for re-matches. I hope they do better than they did the first time around…

News

This one graph should end the debate on wind and solar energy

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Federal subsidies per unit of electricity
Federal subsidies per unit of electricity

(Click for larger image)

From a U.S. House of Representatives report. (H/T Doug Ross)

Excerpt:

In the fall of 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama made a campaign promise to jumpstart the economy with an influx of green jobs… The President has kept his promise to spend billions of borrowed dollars on green energy, but his promises that such spending would create a new, self-sufficient industry capable of providing millions of jobs for Americans have proven empty.

[…]Two years later, the President’s promise of millions of jobs stands in stark contrast with reality. As a recent report from a Bay-Area news organization made clear, green jobs predictions are “proving a pipe dream.”

[…]Since its introduction in the 2009 stimulus bill, the Department of Energy (DOE) has issued $40 billion in new loan guarantees for private-sector loans for renewable energy projects that might not otherwise have been market-viable. Already, multi-million dollar projects, initially labeled as successes, have failed:

• The first renewable energy loan guarantee recipient, solar start-up Solyndra, received a loan guarantee for $535 million in the fall of 2009, even after repeated warnings from federal financial analysts. In the spring of 2010, it failed to complete its initial public offering after an independent audit questioned the ongoing viability of the firm. Then, in the fall of 2010, the firm closed one of its manufacturing facilities and laid off 180 workers. Finally, the firm declared bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 employees only 15 months after Obama visited a company factory.

• Beacon Power, received a $43 million loan guarantee in July of 2009. Since then, its stock price has dropped by 90 percent – a period during which the NASDAQ exchange on which it is listed has increased by 40 percent. The company has not been in compliance with NASDAQ listing requirements, leading to a delisting determination from the exchange.

• First Wind Holdings, received a $117 million loan guarantee in March of 2010. First Wind withdrew its initial public offering in October of 2010, due to a lack of investor demand. According to the Boston Globe, investors shied away from the company because “First Wind owes more than $500 million, loses money on a steady basis, and reports a negative cash flow.”

Even in the midst of these failures, DOE has been advertising additional loan guarantee recipients, announcing a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to another solar company just one day after the FBI raided Solyndra’s offices. Congressional investigators are initiating a review to examine how many future Solyndras have been already financed by this loan-guarantee program or approved through shoddy review, and how can we prevent future examples of this kind of wasteful federal spending.

Why are we in a recession and bleeding jobs? Because we voted for an anti-science ideologue whose energy policy is designed to 1) pay off his Democrat campaign fundraisers and 2) allow him to put on a show about caring for the planet more than those nasty Republicans. We aren’t going to have a lower unemployment rate and lower consumer prices on energy until we kick out the anti-science crowd. I understand that some people believe in religious nonsense like global warming and Keynesianism. That’s fine – let them keep that in the university classroom. Let the Democrat professors of rhetoric like Christina Romer and Paul Krugman make fine-sounding speeches and build castles in the sky there. But out here in the real world, we have to be more practical than that.

In other news, I note that naturalist High Priest Eugenie Scott is claiming that there is no evidence against Darwinism and global warming. God, save us from being ruled by flat-Earth religious nutcases. I don’t mind if they want to say these things in atheist churches, but the rest of us should NOT have to be ruled by their dangerous religious delusions. There’s a place for blind faith, and it’s not in legislature. They shouldn’t be subsidizing their religion with taxpayer dollars. Separation of church and state.