Mick wrote:
Craig is probably the best debater I have ever seen and he is a professional philosopher. .

snowman wrote:Well, not exactly a "debate", at least not between two persons but between Dawkins and a whole university. The legendary "Dawkins at Lynchburg" video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_z85O0P2M

Surely, the questioners are unexperienced and are no intellectuals. Yet, Dawkins clarity and his precise anwers, perfectly formulated, are quite amazing.

murshid wrote:
Is that the one where Dawkins gave his famous answer to the question "What if you're wrong?"

snowman wrote:

murshid wrote:
Is that the one where Dawkins gave his famous answer to the question "What if you're wrong?"

Exactly
I really like this debate, because Dawkins does not try to ridicule the questioners, he does not use any rethorical tricks and he keeps a very simple and clear language, yet he is extremely convincing on his points by just concentrating on the facts. In this debate he shows how to condense the arguments to the essential points, leaving out as much as possible, but not too much to understand.

murshid wrote:
Well, I don't think that was a debate. It was more like a lecture followed by a 'Question & Answer' session.
.

Mick wrote:The arguments he gives in his site were blatantly invalid (it makes me wonder how a philosopher doesnt know how to formulate valid arguments) ...

z8000783 wrote:

Mick wrote:The arguments he gives in his site were blatantly invalid (it makes me wonder how a philosopher doesnt know how to formulate valid arguments) ...

Got an example?

John

Consider the basic argument for naturalism:



First, Nature exists.
Second, There are insufficient reasons to believe that the supernatural exists.
Conclusion: Only nature exists.

andrewk wrote:

King David wrote:I seriously can't understand why so many atheists on this forum think Craig "wins" his debates. If you call making sophistical arguments and often getting away with it "winning," I guess you could say he wins, but otherwise he loses. His arguments are fallacious, and he is quite annoying and smug in expounding them, but they are not convincing in any sense.

You're right that Craig doesn't make superior arguments - often quite the contrary - but debating is all about convincing your audience in real time, not about whether a post-mortem dissection of the arguments shows those of one side to be more consistent than those of the other.

People win debates by sounding like they know what they are talking about and are in possession of 'the truth' more than the other side. That's why George W Bush won some of his debates against Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race. Much of what Bush said was nonsense, but it sounded good. I suspect Ronald Reagan worked the same way against his opponents, but I've never heard those debates.

By the way, I just listened to a Craig vs Carrier debate and noticed another interesting technique of Craig's - the fake laugh of incredulity. He quotes something his opponent has said, describing it as an 'absolutely basic error' that not even the most incompetent genuine scholar would make and keeps on throwing in chuckles, building them to a crescendo as he goes on. The non-verbal message is that what his opponent has said is so ludicrous and ignorant that Craig is unable to retain his composure at the hilarity of it all. It's entirely fake, but extremely effective.

a gradual increase in loudness in a piece of music.

a passage of music marked to be performed in this way.

the loudest point reached in a gradually increasing sound : Deborah's voice was rising to a crescendo.

a progressive increase in force or intensity : a crescendo of misery.

• the most intense point reached in this; a climax : the negative reviews reached a crescendo in mid-February.

orpheus wrote:But one thing: a crescendo is an increase in volume; the process of getting louder. It is not the loudest point itself. Therefore one cannot "build to a crescendo". Via a crescendo, one builds to a climax.

Mick wrote:You'll see a lot of back slapping here. It's kinda funny. With the obvious exception of Teuton, many skeptics here rarely criticize the really bad arguments that their buddies give.