According to the website of Fox News: "American Evangelical theologian William Lane Craig is ready to debate the rationality of faith during his U.K tour this fall, but it appears that some atheist philosophers are running shy of the challenge.This month president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of an agreed debate at London’s Westminster Central Hall in October, saying she “hadn’t realized the nature of Mr. Lane Craig’s debating style.”
Responding to Toynbee’s cancellation, Lane Craig commented: "These folks (atheists) can be very brave when they are alone at the podium and there's no one there to challenge them. But one of the great things about these debates is that, it allows both sides to be heard on a level playing field, and for the students in the audience to make up their own minds about where they think the truth lies."
Read more here.
I agree with Craig's opinion about atheistic ideologues. Basically, they're INTELLECTUAL COWARDS. They feel very brave in atheistic internet forums or infamous websites (like PZ Meyers' blog) in which they act like wild cats. But when they're challenged to defend rationally their beliefs in a high-level public debate, many of them chicken out of it.
For example, at least 4 times, atheist Richard Dawkins has been invited to debate Craig regarding Gods' existence, and consistently Dawkins has refused to accept such intellectual challenges. See for example this video where Dawkins says he won't debate Craig:
In fact, Craig actually did exchange some arguments with Dawkins in Mexico, and you can see how Dawkins replied to Craig's arguments (intellectually and philosophically, Dawkins is clearly a light-weight amateur):
Craig is well-known for his reputation of sweeping the floor with atheists in his debates. In my opinion, some of the factors which explain why Craig wins his debates are these:
1-There are no good, persuasive or sound rational arguments for atheism. The best ones (like some recent versions of the argument from evil) have been refuted or undermined by sophisticated theists.
This is the main reason why atheists try to avoid debating Craig. And the few atheists who accept such debates are clearly and painfully defeated by Craig. (See a recent example here).
2-As a rule (and save some exceptions), atheistic ideologues are intellectually dishonest and sophistical "thinkers". As consequence, they are ready to lie and even defend incoherent positions just in order to win the argument. Therefore, for a seasoned debater like Craig, it is very easy to spot these fallacies and exposing them publicly, making the atheist to look like a sophistical, ignorant and dishonest charlatan.
For example, Michael Martin (a leading atheistic philosopher of religion) rejects the notion of simultaneous causation in order to undermine the Kalam argument for God: "God cannot have caused the universe in any sense one can understand since a cause is normally temporally prior to its effect"
However, atheistic philosopher of religion Quentin Smith appeals to simultaneous causation when arguing for atheism: "Bill believes the Big Bang was caused by God and I believe it both caused itself to exist and caused the later states of the universe to exist. At the Big Bang there is a line of simultaneous causes and effects. This is implied both by a Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics and by the EPR correlations - for those of you in the audience who are science majors - which imply - you don't need to understand either of the sciences to understand my talk - and these theories imply that there are instantaneous causal relations between simultaneous events" (emphasis in blue added)
Note that Martin and Smith cannot be both right. If Martin is right, Smith's case is seriously undermined. If Smith is right, Martin's objection is refuted. However, for atheists, it is not a motive for concern: their whole purpose is not to find the truth, but to defend atheism at all cost even if they begin from mutually incompatible premises. (It seems that atheism has to be true, even if the case for it begins from mutually incompatible premises regarding the physical universe!)
Another example: Martin argues that some cosmologists have embraced the (absurd) view that the universe began "out of nothing": "First of all, the universe could arise spontaneously, that is, "out of nothing." Several well known cosmologists have embraced this view".
However, atheist Jeff Jay Lowder (the founder of the infidels.org website) has argued "Naturalists who accept the Big Bang model do not believe that the Universe just pop into existence out of nothing", as you can hear in this video:
1-There are no good, persuasive or sound rational arguments for atheism. The best ones (like some recent versions of the argument from evil) have been refuted or undermined by sophisticated theists.
This is the main reason why atheists try to avoid debating Craig. And the few atheists who accept such debates are clearly and painfully defeated by Craig. (See a recent example here).
2-As a rule (and save some exceptions), atheistic ideologues are intellectually dishonest and sophistical "thinkers". As consequence, they are ready to lie and even defend incoherent positions just in order to win the argument. Therefore, for a seasoned debater like Craig, it is very easy to spot these fallacies and exposing them publicly, making the atheist to look like a sophistical, ignorant and dishonest charlatan.
For example, Michael Martin (a leading atheistic philosopher of religion) rejects the notion of simultaneous causation in order to undermine the Kalam argument for God: "God cannot have caused the universe in any sense one can understand since a cause is normally temporally prior to its effect"
However, atheistic philosopher of religion Quentin Smith appeals to simultaneous causation when arguing for atheism: "Bill believes the Big Bang was caused by God and I believe it both caused itself to exist and caused the later states of the universe to exist. At the Big Bang there is a line of simultaneous causes and effects. This is implied both by a Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics and by the EPR correlations - for those of you in the audience who are science majors - which imply - you don't need to understand either of the sciences to understand my talk - and these theories imply that there are instantaneous causal relations between simultaneous events" (emphasis in blue added)
Note that Martin and Smith cannot be both right. If Martin is right, Smith's case is seriously undermined. If Smith is right, Martin's objection is refuted. However, for atheists, it is not a motive for concern: their whole purpose is not to find the truth, but to defend atheism at all cost even if they begin from mutually incompatible premises. (It seems that atheism has to be true, even if the case for it begins from mutually incompatible premises regarding the physical universe!)
Another example: Martin argues that some cosmologists have embraced the (absurd) view that the universe began "out of nothing": "First of all, the universe could arise spontaneously, that is, "out of nothing." Several well known cosmologists have embraced this view".
However, atheist Jeff Jay Lowder (the founder of the infidels.org website) has argued "Naturalists who accept the Big Bang model do not believe that the Universe just pop into existence out of nothing", as you can hear in this video:
If Martin is right, and some naturalist cosmologists have embraced the view that the universe began to exist "out of nothing", then Lowder's claim is false. And if Lowder is right, Martin's claim is false. Anyway, one of them is lying.
Another example: Atheist Lawrence Krauss, in order to reject God's existence and defend atheism, is prepared to deny that 2+2=4 is true, as you can watch in this funny video:
3-As consequence of their intellectual dishonesty, atheist ideologues CONSISTENTLY misrepresent the arguments for God's existence. For example, in criticizing the Kalam argument for God's existence, Martin ineptly argues: "It is simply not the case that modern science assumes that everything has a cause"
But the Kalam argument doesn't say that everything has a cause, but that whatever BEGINS to exist has a cause, as Craig explains in this video:
Another example: Atheist Lawrence Krauss, in order to reject God's existence and defend atheism, is prepared to deny that 2+2=4 is true, as you can watch in this funny video:
3-As consequence of their intellectual dishonesty, atheist ideologues CONSISTENTLY misrepresent the arguments for God's existence. For example, in criticizing the Kalam argument for God's existence, Martin ineptly argues: "It is simply not the case that modern science assumes that everything has a cause"
But the Kalam argument doesn't say that everything has a cause, but that whatever BEGINS to exist has a cause, as Craig explains in this video:
It's astonishing to see a "prominent" (atheist) philosopher of religion misrepresenting the kalam argument in that way. In fact, Martin is not informed (or is intentionally misrepresenting the facts in order to fool the readers, or is intellectually unable to understand philosophical arguments) that NO ONE of the best defenders of the cosmological argument has ever argued that "everything has a cause".
As comments philosopher of religion Edward Feser: "n fact, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid “everything has a cause” argument—not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Thomas Aquinas, not John Duns Scotus, not G.W. Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne. And not anyone else either, as far as I know. Perhaps... you think that when trying to refute some of history’s greatest minds, a good strategy would be to attack an argument none of them ever defended"
Can you see why atheist "intellectuals" like those are so easy prey for Craig and why they refuse to debate him? They have not the intellectual honesty, the logical rigour, the knowledge of philosophy and the proper cognitive faculties needed to defend their position coherently and find the truth (if they had all of these things, they weren't atheists).
A few atheists will accept Craig's intellectual challenge. And they'll be badly beaten... AGAIN.As comments philosopher of religion Edward Feser: "n fact, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid “everything has a cause” argument—not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Thomas Aquinas, not John Duns Scotus, not G.W. Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne. And not anyone else either, as far as I know. Perhaps... you think that when trying to refute some of history’s greatest minds, a good strategy would be to attack an argument none of them ever defended"
Can you see why atheist "intellectuals" like those are so easy prey for Craig and why they refuse to debate him? They have not the intellectual honesty, the logical rigour, the knowledge of philosophy and the proper cognitive faculties needed to defend their position coherently and find the truth (if they had all of these things, they weren't atheists).
Many atheist propagandists are charlatans and frauds, and they are intentionally misleading the public. As no-holds-barred truth-seekers, our intellectual and ethical principles demand that such atheists receive a proper, systematic and evidence-based debunking, and this blog is (and always will be) a modest attempt to do precisely that.
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