Richard Dawkins: “You only need to use the word ‘faith’ when you haven’t any evidence.”
John Lennox: “No, no, not at all. I presume you have faith in your wife. Is there any evidence for that?”
Dawkins: “Yes, plenty-”
Lennox: “Hmmm”
Just watched the first debate between Oxford professors Richard Dawkins and John Lennox (DawkinsLennoxDebate.com) – it was fantastic. The format was frustrating (favouring Lennox), but I thought Lennox dealt some very powerful blows to Dawkins’ straw-men and false dichotomies, while agreeing with his (many) valid points.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Dawkins’ assertion that faith is irrational will never be persuasive to anyone outside his fan club while-ever he persists in using his own definition of faith – as the above quote demonstrates. He is on safe but unpersuasive ground saying “Faith is irrational” having already defined it as such.
By my assessment, Lennox dealt deftly and swiftly with the 8 ‘theses’ of The God Delusion, dismantling them with precision. While I should like to hear the responses of my atheistic readers to Lennox’s critique, I simply cannot believe The God Delusion has been so celebrated. Were I an atheist, I could say it no better than philosopher Michael Ruse: ‘The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.’
The comments from Team Atheist at RichardDawkins.net show not everyone shares my assessment – but perhaps this could be proof that one can be just as blindly dogmatic and indoctrinated against religion as by it.
Don’t forget to watch the debate (or listen). Further reading: Lennox’s book ‘God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?’
I’ll conclude with a quote from a very famous scientist:
A serious case could be made for a deistic God. (Richard Dawkins, 2008)
Hey Hayesy. I listened to that first debate shortly after it happened. I don’t remember the whole thing, but I do remember being shocked at the disparity of the format and that Dawkins did well despite this.
For those who came in late, rather than a question or topic, Dawkins was given a snippet of his book (not chosen by him) to elaborate upon, keeping him from bringing up any new points. Lennox responded, and then Dawkins was immediately given the next snippet. If Dawkins wanted to respond to anything Lennox said before the very last five minutes, he had to eat into his own time for reinforcing the next point. If he’d kept strictly to his instructions, Lennox would have been free to say anything he liked about God and atheism without reply. It wasn’t just unfair; it wasn’t designed to be a debate at all.
Anti-atheist sites like the now-defunct Atheismsucks blog made a big deal out of that first quote. Lennox simply pointed out that Dawkins uses two different definitions of faith in different contexts, one which depends on evidence (faith in gravity, conservation of energy, his wife) and one which doesn’t (faith in gods). I know you and Lennox believe faith in God is supported by evidence, but don’t tell me nobody’s ever said that they would believe even in the complete absence of evidence.
If there IS evidence for God, the definition of faith is moot and that evidence needs to be brought to bear in a “debate”, and Lennox didn’t do that. He disregarded any Josh McDowell-style arguments for Jesus (apparently he uses those in the next debate) and instead declared that the Bible correctly chose whether the universe had a beginning. As Dawkins said, that it chose right with a 50% chance is unimpressive. As I frequently say when rebutting the cosmological argument, whether there WAS a beginning is still very much in question.
Lennox frequently brought up communist atrocities. Unlike Greg Koukl who at least shifted the blame to “atheist ideologies”, Lennox placed the blame squarely on atheism itself. It was the standard argument from consequences. Even if there were a causal link from atheism to genocide, which there isn’t (see my response to Koukl’s essay) it says nothing about the reality of gods.
I’m looking forward to hearing the new debate from last week. The overall topic was Lennox’s book this time, but rather than use the same format they went for a more open discussion.
I wasn’t surprised when the initial reactions on RD.net disagreed with Melanie Phillips’ account (you got the last quote from her article), but I was even less surprised when I read up on Phillips. She defends the teaching of creationism in schools, links the MMR vaccine to autism and denies manmade global warming, and her writings are frequently anti-Semitic to boot. She’s the science-phobic “religious right” up and down. I won’t accuse her of quote-mining until I’ve heard the debate, but I’ll certainly suspect her of it.
Assuming Dawkins did say, “A serious case could be made for a deistic God,” and assuming from his later reaction to Phillips that he doesn’t actually think there is one, what could he have been saying?
Dawkins said “could be made” and not “has been made”. He didn’t say it would win, either. So if you really wanted to, you could argue for a Creator, probably using the fine-tuning argument, and you might do quite well, though Dawkins has a response to that and other deistic arguments in TGD. Dawkins’ actual point, I’m sure, was that by contrast there is no decent case for a THEISTIC god who answers prayers, judges souls and so on. That’s the kind of argument Lennox was there to make.
Phillips discussed “something from nothing” with Dawkins, and got his response. Her ultimate argument in reply, which she did not put to Dawkins, is the separate question of the origin of “purpose-carrying codes” like DNA. Purpose implies intelligence, not merely function. DNA has a function but no purpose of its own. It does, but it does not want. Undirected chemical reactions are perfectly capable of forming simple organisms, or at least they are not prevented from doing so by any physical law. Purpose and meaning come later, after plenty of mutations and natural selection.
You didn’t go into what Lennox actually said, Hayesy. What do you think were his strongest points?