McGrath vs. Dawkins Online
30 comments | Permalink
posted by JT at Monday, March 26, 2007
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30 Comments:
As a Christian, I thought I was going to be disappointed with this debate from our side. And so far (I'm on part 1 and the beginning of the exchange), my thoughts a head of time were correct. But, I'm still listening.
I haven't had a chance to listen to this (and I probably won't), but I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts on it. What disappointed you, Jeff? I've heard several recordings of McGrath and I've been impressed with him. I have not been impressed with Dawkins' arguments.
Oh, I should point out that I'm not the same Chase who comments here on occasion, but Google is forcing me to use that username.
I am a Christian by God’s grace, and I have listened to the debate and have a two comments:
1. I find it very frustrating in almost all atheism vs. theism debates or almost any debate for that matter is how quick they are. I found this one more interesting and easy to follow then the Akins-McGrath one (especially since the recording was bad and that Akins interrupted a lot), but still lacking in that neither can sufficiently lay out there arguments because of minimal time. It ends up being more of a quick point here and there rather than sustained arguments. I would love to hear/see a 4 hour debate between the two.
2. I find purely theistic argumentation and debate insufficient unless they are always going toward the person and work of Christ (now I know atheism to theism can be a stepping-stone for some to Christian conversion, and may God use it as so, but I think a Christ-less theistic argument is in fact not a theistic argument of the true theos). I think the Christian philosopher should always be arguing for and toward the person and work of Christ, and I did not think that was done here. Now some may argue that wasn’t the purpose of the debate, but in my thinking the point is not to prove or reason or argue (I know there is a difference here in technical terms) that there is a God but that God has revealed Himself in Christ. Theism without Christ is itself the worst delusion.
I've only heard Dawkins segment so far, and I'm not very iumpressed. In the first place, he does not deal with critiques to his "ultimate 747" argument. Indeed, when people point out that his argument, based on the complexity of God, is ignorant of why the argument does not hold water, he approvingly quotes a passage talking of the "emporers new clothes". He is performing a rhetorical bait and switch. For a full expression of this, see Plantinga's philosophical response to Dawkins.
To me it was unclear what exactly they "debated." Dawkins seemed to argue that religion cannot scientifically prove that God exists. McGrath seemed to argue (overall) that religious belief is not delusional. They did not seem to meet each other's arguments. It was like listening to presidential candidates debate each other.
noting the comments of the above, I will not attempt to exercise my "baby theologian" muscle.
Only to say thanks again JT for the wealth of information and entertainment you provide.
It seems to me that Alister is not philosophically sophisticated. I would have liked to hear that the Christian worldview makes science possible in the first place, and then extrapolate on it. Alister gives too much adherence to Dawkin's science, and is a theistic evolutionist himself! He is very fideistic in his apologetic. He also says we cannot prove that God exist. This gives Dawkin's the upper hand at this point. Proof and persuasion are two different things. I would argue that without the Christian worldview you could not prove anything at all. I expected something better. I think Alister means well, but not much argument there!
Excellent. Thank you Justin. We're headed toward a Creation v. Evolution debate this fall, in Indy. This .mp3, and your commenters' links have been very helpful. ...Neil
Matt R. and I seem to agree. McGrath gives up too much (he shouldn't give up any) ground to Dawkins. I thought Dawkins' presentation was riddled with error (at least what I listened to) as well.
The debated seem to end on a good note.
Our theology begins and ends with God's covenant in history, not theistic proofs. Yet, McGrath does not extend himself much beyond Plantinga, to defend Christianity as equally possible as anything else. I'm glad he doesn't go further, because it becomes too difficult to discern according to natural reason why (without a shadow of a doubt) Christianity is better than any and everything else, in particular due to the time restrictions (even a great 10 volume tome would be inadequate to cover such a topic). I'm glad he was modest, especially since his argument addresses Dawkins' claims more directly, rather than presenting off-topic responses which would prove everything and even include the kitchen sink. But, alas, such debates do very little for me. After all, they belong more to the museum of modernism rather than our everyday lives and concerns in the real world. :-) Don't hate. Respect.
I haven't had time to listen to this yet - but I would concur with bj stockman - Jesus should be the focal point of this debate - going there kills off alot of Dawkins rhetoric about flying spaghett monsters etc. Also Jesus is where we want to get to if we care for Dawkins soul.
Taking up Matt.R.'s point - That's where Greg Bahnsen was a genius - for anyone who hasnt listened to his debate with Gordon Stein - have a poke around the web until you find it. Or listen to his Practical Apologetics course from cmfnow.com
A good dose of pre-suppositional apologetics would be helpful.
Matt R.,
How do you propose that McGrath should prove that God exists?
(Seems like if we could actually do that, this debate would never have taken place. . .)
I'm also interested in how you'd go about arguing that without a Christian worldview one can't prove anything at all, if you could elaborate.
More here
Sorry to whinge, but you'd swear the server the debate is coming from is still on dial up!
I was taken back by the arrogance of some of the "questions" from the audience.
That's why written questions from the audience is a much better way of doing things.
I was also surprised that McGrath didn't attack Dawkins' Enlightenment epistemology more. That seemed extremely weak.
About the Bahnsen-Stein debate, that's a classic but it's clear that Stein was out of his league when it came to the study of philosophy.
It would be pretty interesting for Dawkins to debate someone trained in debate like William Lane Craig.
Justin,
Thank you for the question. To argue that you cannot prove anything without the Christian worldview is arguing for the impossibility of the contrary. The Christian God, since he is sovereign can hold the universe together, and thus we can assume the uniformty of nature. This makes science possible, history possible etc. Also in an evolutionary story, our cognitive faculties arrived by chance and necessity which is a problem because since we could never arrive at truth in the first place!
Minds that are trustworthy must arrive by a design plan and not derived from matter as Dawkins would have us believe. Our thoughts are abstract and cannot be reduced to material principals. The Christian worldview is the only the only one that can account for these sorts of things. Our God is separate from his creation, is all knowing, non-material etc. Non material things like the laws of logic, numbers, laws of gravity are not material like in nature. I suggest reading Plantinga, Bahnsen, Poythress,Etc. Too much to extrapolate on here! Note: That we are pointing out things that the unbeliever already knows, and exposing their borrowed capital. Romans Capital. Romans 1
Matt R.,
Thanks for the response! I understand a bit more what you are saying. I guess I do not see how arriving "from chance and necessity" would necessarily prevent us from arriving at truth.
Justin,
In addition to the information Matt gave you, I would recommend listening to the debate between Greg Bahnsen and Gordon Stein. Here's the link: http://www.cmfnow.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=234
The way Presuppositionalism works is by demonstrating that non-Christian worldviews cannot account for the necessary preconditions of knowledge and experience, whereas the Christian worldview can. Thus, in this debate Bahnsen points out that Stein's materialist worldview is inconsistent with appealing to abstractions, like the laws of logic.
Thanks, Doug. I'll try to check that out when I get a chance. I just heard Joe Boot from RZIM explain it a bit on a cd I got from them recently. Still a little hazy to me, though.
I was very disappointed with the debate. The real issue is still being subverted. Belief in God is not on the same level as evolution. Philosophical naturalism is. The debate needs to start with the presuppositions. The argument will go nowhere until people like McGrath and other move the focus from theism vs. evolution to theism vs. philosophical naturalism. We must ask them to prove philosophical naturalism just as they want us to prove God. Until then, they continue to make it sound like they have the upper hand even though their argument is faulty from the start.
I agree with much of what has been said, especially BJ Stockman and Matt R.
Though the debate was too short and more like a couple of homilies than a full throttle arguement, it did take place and that in itself is something of a blessing for a country like the UK with such a long modernist shadow.
Having said that I thought Alister McGrath did very well. I enjoy his lectures and books (I have just read the Dawkins Delusion, the Science of God, and Twilight of Atheism).
Conversely I thought Dawkins floundered a little (and, yes, I read The God Delusion for good measure). As many have pointed out Dawkins makes rhetorical statements rather than well thought out points and is actually quite frustrating to listen to.
Now I must go and read some Plantinga!
Thank you so much for recommending Plantinga.
I read the article below and found it helpful and hugely entertaining. Plus I now understand more of the comments here.
Thanks.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/002/1.21.html
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I thought this debate was a wholesale disaster. I haven't read McGrath yet, but I was well aware of his academic stature, and I was hoping for better. Is he really entirely unaware of the epistemological issues surrounding this topic? Dawkins put the noose around his own neck at least half a dozen times, and McGrath ignored the opportunities. Here were some I noticed:
1. Dawkins disbelieves in God at level 6 out of 7, meaning not completely certain, in the same sense he's not completely certain that (a) flying spaghetti monsters and (b) invisible pink unicorns don't exist. In other words he's not completely certain of anything. As a Christian I am perfectly certain of the non-existence of (a) because the God of Christianity is faithful with regard to empirical phenomena, hence no flying spaghetti monsters and of (b) because a pink unicorn implies optical radiation of specific wavelength in the visible spectrum, hence a logical contradiction, and the God of Christianity is a logical God who I know doesn't deal in contradictions. So Dawkins ultimately cannot justify any knowledge at all, either empirical or logical, and Christianity makes both possible.
2. Dawkins says that at this point in history, there is a basic consensus about morality, what is right and wrong. Was that a joke? Is Europe really so ideologically homogenized now that an educated person can believe that there is a basic consensus about morality? It is almost impossible to imagine that at any point in history there could ever have been less of a consensus on fundamental moral questions (war, abortion, euthanasia) And that's just in the west, nevermind if you consider other cultures. Of course, Dawkins cannot justify any moral proposition without presupposing the God of the Bible.
3. Dawkins says that miracles would constitute a completely capricious and irrational action on the part of God, violating the inviolable laws of nature. Well, this might have some credence if you assumed that the events of history, including miracles, are not part of the determined purpose of the same rational God who rules in history just as fully and rationally as he rules physical reality, and hence miracles are just as rational and purposeful as the inverse square law of gravity. To this point, McGrath gave a neo-orthodox response, that the historical events don't really matter, but just the significance behind the appearances, which is just a non-answer.
This would have been no contest with Bahnsen.
I enjoyed this debate mostly for its dyed-in-the-wool jolly-hockey-sticks Englishness.
Regarding Benjamin's last post:
1) I think the point here is that within the scientific method, it's not possible to prove something, just make a statement on how likely it is. You can assemble confirming instances for your hypothesis that makes it extremely likely but for most statements you can only disprove, not prove. So I can make a statement that says "There is no Flying Spagetti Monster" which I can never really prove. If I produce a single FSM though, I easily disprove it. I think that he's admitting that within that framework, he cannot rule out the existance of God absolutely. No-one who professes to follow the scientific world view can. All they can do is make a statement that they consider the existance of God, FSM and the tooth fairy equally likely.
2) I took that as meaning that there is a consensus on morality in that we all have a concept of right and wrong, not that we all agreed that the same things were right or wrong. Following from this, that not everyone who considers themselves moral uses the Bible as a reference. His point is weak though.
3) Bejnamin wrote
"Well, this might have some credence if you assumed that the events of history, including miracles, are not part of the determined purpose of the same rational God who rules in history just as fully and rationally as he rules physical reality,"
I think we can assume that Dawkins *does not* assume this. Are you criticising McGrath's reponse because he did not simply retreat into dogma? Dawkin's assertation that miracles violate the inviolable laws of nature only means anything if you believe that the laws of nature are inviolable. I don't think that this is part of the Christian world view.
Those interested in the in-print and audio debates between Dawkins and McGrath (no relation) will presumably want to see the video footage that has been made available of an interview Dawkins made of McGrath for one of his programs, but that was not included in the broadcast in the end. Here is a link:
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2007/08/other-mcgrath-interviewed-by-richard.html
Glad to have come across this site; have been doing a lot of mind-wrestling in this area for awhile.
Re: creationism. My problem with creationism has always been that the proponents of it are guilty of two common, fatal errors:
a) They really don't even know what Genesis says anymore, which is the only place to have gotten the idea of "creationism" in the first place. They have in their minds what "creationism" means, but a single honest look at Genesis 1 & 2 shows that it isn't an orderly account from which a scientific proposal can be built.
b) They do very little "science" - eg, proposing a well-thought out, experimentally-based hypothesis for debate - as science does. Rather, they sit and look for evidence that fits the text, or change their view of what the text means based on new findings in science. It's how we went from young-earth creationists to old-earth creationists to theistic evolutionists to intelligent design. In a nutshell, all biblical literalists do is try to propose a different meaning for the text.
The benefit I see in Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc., is they put out some obvious, simple arguments that should force us as Christians to rid ourselves of poor theology that no longer fits: specifically hell as a burning, eternal punishment; the bible as a literal, historically-accurate document; and Jesus as a sin debt to appease God. None of these ideas are any longer defendable in my mind, and I had to give them up to find a meaningful life of following Jesus.
mike rucker
http://escroll.blogspot.com
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Way to pat each other on the back for your shared naivety.
As if presupposing the conclusion to your argument from the outset were a reflection of good reason rather than a perverted contortion of it.
Come on! Christianity is the only world view that would assume a rational world?
The reason Dawkins is not debating William Lane Craig or any other of your dim-witted "Presuppositional Apologists" is to avoid waisting everyone's time. Nobody is going to take them seriously enough to find their defeat to mean anything at all but that Dawkins has one quarter of a brain.
To ascribe "reason" let alone "omniscience" to Yahweh is to bend the mind further than one could claim the boundaries of sanity. Of course the foundations of logic itself would be claimed the sole providence of the Creator God of any deserving the name.
Anyone can say "logic is an inherent property of 'x',
therefore if you do not except 'x' you cannot refute that "logic is an inherent property of 'x'.
If we assume that your creator god is a logical being, how can you explain how that state of affairs came to be?
Oh what's that? You can't? Oh, I'm sorry i misunderstood you. You can, by saying that it's just always been that way. Wow, what explainitory power your theories wield!
I must have been waisting my time assuming that my ability to reason is a product of adaptation to an environment with inherent logical properties, because the only way such ultra-reasonable authorities such as Craig can imagine such a state a affairs coming to be is at the hand of a bronze-age warlord of primitive goat herders.
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