According to Tim Ross of the telegraph.co.uk: Richard Dawkins accused of cowardice for refusing to debate existence of God with William Lane Craig

You can read the full story here. A couple of excerpts:

A war of words has broken out between the best selling author of The God Delusion, and his critics, who see his refusal to take on the American academic, William Lane Craig, as a “glaring” failure and a sign that he may be losing his nerve

He told The Daily Telegraph that he had recently debated Prof Craig, in a boxing ring, in Mexico, and claimed he was not impressed by his opponent. His critics say this event was a six-person discussion, not a rigorous debate, but Prof Dawkins disagrees.



Prof Craig, however, remains willing to debate with Prof Dawkins. “I am keeping the opportunity open for him to change his mind and debate with me in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford” in October, he said.

You need to read the full story, so please go to the link.

WHY IS IT LIKELY THAT DAWKINS WON'T DEBATE CRAIG:

As part of my research for the best arguments and evidence for metaphysical naturalism which I began many years ago, I found that Christians philosophers were the most effective critics of naturalism and atheistic materialism. The reason is that metaphysical naturalism is mostly a denial of Christianity. It is almost entirely based on an intense hostility and animosity towards Christianity (for my astonishment as a non-Amerian person and as non-Christian myself, I've discoveried that in USA and Canada, this hostility is shared by many spiritualists and people sympathetic to the "paranormal" too, who essentially use the same fallacious atheistic arguments! I'm in process of researching why is this the case... but this is another topic). Therefore, Christian philosophers have been forced to refine their arguments, while finding holes and flaws in the naturalist worldview.

William Lane Craig is a seasoned debater and leading defender of Christianity in the world today. For more than 20 years, he has debated the leading and most famous atheists in the world (people like Anthony Flew, San Harris, Lewis Wolpert, A.C. Greyling, Quentin Smith, Christopher Hitchens and many many others).

What was shocking for me was to discover that Craig would win easily all or most of these debates. And I found the atheists using crude, philosophically unsophisticated objections, defending absurdities, contradicting each other, making surprising concessions, contradicting their own published work, and sometimes using obvious logical fallacies (for an example, see my post on Craig's debate with Lawrence Krauss).

This was an eye opener to me, because if the best ideologues of materialism and naturalistic atheism cannot defend coherently their position when facing a Christian, then something seriously weird is happening here. Either naturalism is extremely weak, or the naturalists are monumnetally incompetent defenders of the naturalistic ideology.

My conclusion, so far, is that naturalism is false, and you cannot defend a falsehood in a coherent fashion. This is the secret behind Craig's success in his debates. For a trained philosopher like him, it is relatively easy to win his debates when debating naturalistic atheists. (I'm not implying that Christianity is false, and Craig's case for it is weak: If Christianity is false or not, depends largely on the topic of Jesus' Resurrection as being an historical fact, which is largely a controversial topic which I'm in process of researching right now).

My point is simply that Craig's strategy works fine against naturalistic and materialistic atheists, because they have not the philosophical resources to defend their position coherently.

And this is why I think that Richard Dawkins won't debate Craig. Dawkins fully knows that his case for atheism is philosophically weak, and that such case is convincing only for already convinced atheists or "agnostics" sympathetic to materialism.

Do you dare to debate Dawkins regarding zoology? Unless you're a trained zoologist, or an amateur with extensive knowledge of it, you would be stupid to pretend to cross swords with Dawkins in a topic of his speciality. You have to be aware of your own limitations.

Likewise, would Dawkins be so stupid as to cross swords with a philosopher and theologian like Craig in the latter's own field of speciality, namely, the arguments for God's existence? Obviously not. Dawkins fully knows that he won't win a debate with Craig regarding this topic.

Is Dawkins a coward? Previously, I've thought that he is. But now, I think his position is reasonable from a strategical point of view. This is a smart position. Why should Dawkins to expose himself to be kicked in the butt publicly? This doesn't make any sense.

So, I conclude that Dawkins won't debate Craig, and he's smart to do that.

PROPOSAL FOR A DEBATE WITH CRAIG THAT RICHARD DAWKINS WOULD POSSIBLY ACCEPT:

But contrary to other critics of Dawkins (I myself count as a critic of him), I think Dawkins would accept a debate with Craig if the topic is another: Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design. This is a topic which is part of Dawkins' own field of specialization, so there is not reason why he could think that Craig would win.

Does Craig would accept to debate that topic with Dawkins? I don't know, but I suspect that he would. Why? Because Craig has debated about Darwinism and Intelligent Design with biologists defenders of Darwinism (see Craig's debate with Francisco Ayala).

So, I propose a debate between Dawkins and Craig regarding the following topic: Is Intelligent Design in biology a viable alternative to Neo-Darwinism?

I see no reason why Dawkins would reject such debate, in fact perhaps he will be eager to take Craig in this topic!