Posted: Nov 21, 2010 11:03 pm
The full debate was so surreal that it was like watching an episode of Father Ted, or an episode of the Simpsons where they mock an extreme caricature of some foreign cultural quirk. I really hoped for the debaters sake that the format was something cultural that I'm just not familiar with at all.
Craig was disappointing, and I've never really watched any of his debates in full, so my expectation going into the debate was that he would demonstrate these world class debating and rhetorical sophistry skills that he seems to have a reputation for, even on atheist blogs and forums. The fallacies were so large that an ocean liner could have been put through them, and indeed, as in the above clip, Dawkins did do with rather simple clarity and elegance. And then there was his final comment end, when he came close to a hissy fit, sniping over Dawkins' supposed bigotry in his anti-religious speech the day earlier. He picked up on Dawkins' point that our purposes are constructed and subjective, arguing that only god and religious can provide objective purpose, but missing the point that until you demonstrate that this god and objective purpose actually exist, then these ideas of theistic purpose are entirely constructed and subjective as well. Those weren't the arguments of a sophisticated philosopher and academic, but the wishful thinking of a desperately lost and frustrated child.
And who else failed to supress a guffaw when the other theist debater described C.S Lewis as a 'great Christian thinker'? Pfft.
Craig was disappointing, and I've never really watched any of his debates in full, so my expectation going into the debate was that he would demonstrate these world class debating and rhetorical sophistry skills that he seems to have a reputation for, even on atheist blogs and forums. The fallacies were so large that an ocean liner could have been put through them, and indeed, as in the above clip, Dawkins did do with rather simple clarity and elegance. And then there was his final comment end, when he came close to a hissy fit, sniping over Dawkins' supposed bigotry in his anti-religious speech the day earlier. He picked up on Dawkins' point that our purposes are constructed and subjective, arguing that only god and religious can provide objective purpose, but missing the point that until you demonstrate that this god and objective purpose actually exist, then these ideas of theistic purpose are entirely constructed and subjective as well. Those weren't the arguments of a sophisticated philosopher and academic, but the wishful thinking of a desperately lost and frustrated child.
And who else failed to supress a guffaw when the other theist debater described C.S Lewis as a 'great Christian thinker'? Pfft.