Even Richard Dawkins’s fellow atheists get it. Dawkins’s condescending tone dismissing Craig as an unheard-of philosopher is hardly credible, given the notable fellow-atheists Craig has debated in recent years (Christopher Hitchens, A.C. Grayling, Lewis Wolpert, Peter Atkins, Shelly Kagan, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, just to name a few). Either he has not been paying attention to the comments on his own atheist-website or he is being dishonest.

Just searching the term “William Lane Craig” on Dawkins’s website brings up tons of comments, even some from Dawkins himself. Just today I did this and the site returned 2,670 results. For example, on September 28, 2011, Dawkins made this comment:

“I have to be careful to avoid prejudice resulting from my almost visceral loathing of “Dr” Craig’s odiously unctuous, smug and self-satisfied tone of voice. But this piece of libellous logic-chopping almost deserves to be set alongside his notorious defence of biblical genocide and infanticide. Craig really is a truly disgusting person in the literal sense: he disgusts. After this, I’d have a hard time bringing myself to shake hands with him, let alone share a platform with him.”

Hmm. Interesting words there, Dr. Dawkins. I find it odd that you – writing from your moral highground (cough, cough) – refuse to debate Craig, while Christian apologists are not similarly loathe to debate Peter Singer, a Princeton bio-ethicist who has been quoted as saying: “Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.” (See http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html) Both Dinesh D’Souza and John Lennox have debated Singer – without Dawkins’s self-righteous remarks.

When the heat is on you, the strategy can be either to go forcefully to meet the attack or ignore, hoping the noise will go away. So Dawkins and some others have chosen to ignore. This tact usually works when your opponent is universally recognized to be a quack, but Dr. Craig is no quack. Dawkins knows it, but chooses to ignore anyway. Time will tell if this is to his advantage. I think not.

So, it will be a loss to the intellectual world to have Dawkins miss his opportunity next Tuesday, October 25th, if he does not show up for the debate – which, we think is what will happen. And, not without regret from some of his fellow atheists, as Daniel Came laments in The Guardian on October 22nd:

“As a sceptic, I tend to agree with Dawkins’s conclusion regarding the falsehood of theism, but the tactics deployed by him and the other New Atheists, it seems to me, are fundamentally ignoble and potentially harmful to public intellectual life. For there is something cynical, ominously patronising, and anti-intellectualist in their modus operandi, with its implicit assumption that hurling insults is an effective way to influence people’s beliefs about religion. The presumption is that their largely non-academic readership doesn’t care about, or is incapable of, thinking things through; that passion prevails over reason. On the contrary, people’s attitudes towards religious belief can and should be shaped by reason, not bile and invective. By ignoring this, the New Atheists seek to replace one form of irrationality with another.” (http://tinyurl.com/3lao8jq)

We hope that in the coming days someone from the atheist camp will pick up the banner, and with a respectful and thoughtful tone, engage Christians in a way that promotes light, and not heat (such as the Russell-Copelston BBC debate back in 1948. See http://tinyurl.com/42g3g8u).

Now, that would be a miracle!

Thought control is real in the University – most noticeable in Biology and Anthropology Departments. It is also very alive in certain scientific journals. If you are “outed” as as Pro-ID (Intelligent Design) or even waver in your devotion to neo-Darwinian Evolution, you can lose your tenure and job. Read with dismay how a tenured professor at the University of Texas, El Paso, had his peer-reviewed article pulled from publication in the journal, Applied Mathematics Letters. Ah, but a somewhat happier ending resulted when the light was shined on its decision, disclosing some fairly serious ethical breaches from the journal. Read all about it, here:

Thought Police Humbles Out – Kinda

Lynn Margulis (born March 5, 1938) is an American biologist and University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In an interview in the April 2011 edition of Discover Magazine, she unabashedly objects to the standard neo-Darwinian explanation for evolution. She simply doesn’t believe that natural selection has the causative power that so many otherwise accept. Indeed, her objections are some of the exact same ones shared by other non-Darwinists and ID proponents (Michael Behe, Stephen C. Meyer, Philip Johnson, et. al.). While she proposes another natural mechanism, called The Endosymbiotic Theory, her critique of the standard Darwinian explanation runs deep. Go here for the full the interview:

Lynn Margulis Interview

In this 25 minute video clip from a recent John Ankerberg interview, Meyer answers the four most common objections to ID: 1) Is it really Science? 2) Isn’t it just a God-of-the-gaps argument? 3) Didn’t the Dover decision settle the case against ID? 4) Isn’t it just Religion in disguise? Not surprisingly, he answers a resounding “No” to each question and clarifies his position on every single one.

In addition, Dr. Meyer presents the positive case for ID in a simplified manner for the lay audience. The argument can be stated succinctly and simply. It is, in my opinion, a new, improved version of Paley’s Watchmaker argument. For a thorough treatment of Meyer’s version, read his book, Signature In the Cell. To profit the most, it requires a close reading of the biological details involved in the production of DNA, but nonetheless the general outline of the argument can still be followed even if your molecular biology background is weak. Here’s the link to the interview:

Meyer Answers ID Objections

The EPS (Evangelical Philosophical Society) has just made available all of their conference lectures on their website for download. And not just the audio from this year’s conference but from all of their apologetics-themed conferences up until 2003. That’s around 180 lectures. This is an enormous resource. The downloadable mp3s each cost $1.99 (USD) but this is a small price to pay to hear top scholars such as J. P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, Dr. Ben Witherington III, Dr. R. Douglas Geivett (and our very own New Zealand apologist, Matt Flannagan), and many, many more. While talks and debates by apologists such as Craig, Habermas, and Moreland are readily available on the web already, it is great to have access to lectures by Stephen T. Davis, Chad Meister, Charles Taliaferro–thinkers that we don’t normally have access to online. Thanks to http://thinkingmatters.org.nz for bringing this to our attention.

Check it out now at: EPS Audio Downloads