I Challenge YOU!
Since I personally like to be challenged, I in turn issue challenges to people who visit DC. Here are several links to the biggest challenges I've issued so far:
My main book reading challenge is called the Debunking Christianity Challenge.
But I have also issued a different kind of book reading challenge to all conservative Christians.
If you want to debate me then I challenge you to do this!
Not to be left out, here is a strategy type of challenge to all skeptics.
Some people are stepping up to some of these challenges. Depending on who you are and what you believe, I challenge YOU! Are you up to it?
My main book reading challenge is called the Debunking Christianity Challenge.
But I have also issued a different kind of book reading challenge to all conservative Christians.
If you want to debate me then I challenge you to do this!
Not to be left out, here is a strategy type of challenge to all skeptics.
Some people are stepping up to some of these challenges. Depending on who you are and what you believe, I challenge YOU! Are you up to it?
9 comments:
John, I would love to see you debate Ed Feser, a philosopher who recently published 'The Last Superstition,' which is a systematic philosophic demolition of the 'Four Horsemen' of contemporary atheism. Your book doesn't lay a glove on Feser's arguments, since he begins by laying out a hundred page exposition and defense of an Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics (and subsequently provides a two chapter account of how an Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics both dissolves many modern philosophical puzzles and is actually tacitly used by all of us when we reason), which he then goes on to develop in his arguments for god's existence, while you and others criticize Thomistic arguments while assuming a modern (by which I mean a post-Cartesian/ post-Hobbesian) metaphysics. In this sense, Feser addresses the (basic) arguments in your book by addressing what underlies them, while your book's arguments don't really 'get to' the point where they actually address Feser's arguments.
Also, a debate with your old teacher, WLC, would be interesting too! I know he's debating Quentin Smith (again), Richard Carrier and Christopher Hitchens within the next three months, so it's not as if he's ducking anyone!
Eric,
Though I’ve never heard of Ed Feser, for me the goal of John’s blog is as stated; debunking evangelical Christianity and not the ever changing and always illusive world of the gods and their many expressed theisms.
The Bible itself attacks and tries to debunk all theistic views of god except Israel’s own Yahweh. So, the very fact that Mr. Feser uses Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics would require John to chance rabbits since Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics can support any theistic god / gods including the very gods the Bible itself attacks as either subordinate to Yahweh (as in the Hebrew Bible Exodus 20) or totally false and non-existent (as in the God / Christ alone stand of the New Testament).
For example, the fact that the Book of Revelation depicts the apocalyptic final battle ONLY between Jesus (God) and Satan where only Satan and his demons (along with his minor human followers) are the only ones cast into the Lake of Fire proves that the Bible itself considers all other forms of theism as expressed in whole history of the world’s religions as false and non-existent (a exclusive concept found in the more advanced view of the New Testament over the ancient polytheistic views of the Hebrews).
So, for Mr. Feser’s to win the debate with John, he must prove that all gods in all theistic religious forms are first true and correct; then he must turn right around and attack his Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics supported view and deny an all positive theistic concept in favor of an exclusive Judeo-Christian-Islamic Biblical / Qur’anic ONLY ONE TRUE GOD.
I’m sure Mr. Feser will arguing for some vague doctrinally undefined prime mover who is not incarnate in Christ, who does not hear prayers and Feser won’t be able to handle the fact that the New Testament monotheistic God is himself an atheist when it come to all other gods since none rule with him at the final judgment and neither none are cast into the Lake of Fire.
I find the Aristotelian-Thomistic claim a bit odd, considering that Aristotle's philosophy didn't have much influence in antiquity, and knowledge of it nearly disappeared at the onset of the dark ages. (You would have encountered more Stoics than Aristotelians in Roman times.) It took philosophically inclined Muslims to preserve and reintroduce Aristotle's writings into the West so that Aquinas had access to them in the 13th Century.
In other words, if Aristotelianism-Thomism provides the correct basis for christian beliefs, you have to wonder why god would have let christians grope in philosophical darkness for twelve centuries before this seeming historical accident brought Aristotelianism into the christian world view.
I have personally challenged Ed Feser on his blog in an exchange and he didn't respond.
Hey! Why did you have to challenge ME for!? What da f___ did *I* ever do to YOU, man? Huh? (Sheesh! What a phreak!) Why doncha go and pick up somebody Your own size, buster!
:D
>>Eric
Dr. Feser's book has been ordered and is on the way. I will comment on it once I receive it and have time to complete it. I'm looking forward to it, especially considering I'm closer to Aristotle in philosophy than any other major philosopher!
-Darrin
I thought after Hitchens and Carrier that debates were a bad way to settle truth. Just spectacles, right?
I thought after Hitchens and Carrier that debates were a bad way to settle truth. Just spectacles, right?
I like oral debates for their entertainment value. I prefer a good written debate where both sides have ample time to put forth their best arguments.
John (or other authors of this blog), are you on reddit? If so, I want to friend you. If not, sign up real quick and I will friend you. :)
Post a Comment