Skeptic Chris Hallquist Weighs In: Dawkins SHOULD Debate William Lane Craig

After linking to what I had written Chris said:
...if I had Dawkins’ ear, I would urge him to challenge Craig to a debate on evolution. Craig has always been a creationist of convenience: he knows creationism has a bad name so he distances himself from it, but he is a fellow of the Discovery Institute, and repeats stock creationist claims whenever he finds it rhetorically convenient. And this is Dawkins’ area of expertise, the place where he would really shine. If he thinks there would be bad effects of having the debate, he needn’t worry because Craig has decided it would be bad to defend his views on evolution in a straightforward way, so he never will. Then Dawkins would be able to say, decisively, “You have consistently aligned yourself with creationism, yet you refuse to debate the issue openly with an expert in the field? And you’re calling me a coward?”

Link.

3 comments:

AIGBusted said...

I left a comment on Hallquist's post which was none-too-kind to Craig. I won't repeat it here as I'm not sure you'll want that kind of language on your blog, John.

; )

Richard said...

Live debates about facts seem to not be terribly useful.

Professor Dawkins would have the facts on his side. But, the other side is willing to simply make things up.

Perhaps a text-based debate would be better. This would give each person the chance to really respond to the others' claims, and allow people to cite evidence properly.

RBH said...

Richard H wrote

Perhaps a text-based debate would be better. This would give each person the chance to really respond to the others' claims, and allow people to cite evidence properly.

That's the only form in which I could recommend debating creationists. It has a couple of advantages, two of which Richard points out. A third is that it publicly preserves what each side has said, making such creationist tactics as goal-post mobility and self-contradictions visible for analysis and criticism.