Prof. William Lane Craig at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, Minus Prof. Richard Dawkins

A picture is worth a thousand words. Pic Source: http://tinyurl.com/6c8d38t

I think this must be an image that haunts Richard Dawkins’ mind. Let me preface this by saying Dawkins didn’t show. More’s the pity for him because he would have garnered a lot of respect if he had. He didn’t though and instead William Lane Craig was given 45 uninterrupted minutes to tear into the arguments of The God Delusion which he did with the relish and dexterity of an excited child removing packaging from a chocolate bar only to devour it with unbridled pleasure.

It was a mark of the respect in which William is held that his opponent from the Birmingham debate, Prof. Peter Millican, introduced him for the night. He did so with the utmost respect and good will. Could you imagine Dawkins doing the same thing? Hardly. Millican conceded:

It seems difficult to raise an objection with Criag that he hasn’t already heard before and thought through.

In place of Dawkins there was a panel of 3 Oxford Academics. Craig joked that he wasn’t sure that 3 against 1 was fair! He was more than their match though.

Dr. Daniel Cane (member of the Faculty of Philosophy) took the sceptical agnostic position. I felt slightly sorry for him because he was clearly wracked with nerves or trembling with emotion or a combination of both but it interfered with his delivery somewhat. Still, at least I could understand what he said unlike Stephen Law. Cane defended the Oscillating Universe hypothesis (without getting into details, this is one of the many hypothesis postulated to avoid admitting that the Universe had a beginning and therefore a cause) and the possibility of objective morals without God.

Dr. Stephen Priest (Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy) argued for Theism (not necessarily Christian though). He was certainly the most entertaining character of the night. He had everyone in stitches with his mad hatter-esque musings on the nature of time and being. Priest stated that Philosophy was dead and that:

Only Theology can answer some of life’s bigger questions.

He had a three point argument: 1. Time: why is now now? 2. Being: why do we exist? 3. You: why are you you? I could not do justice to his arguments fully here. The Sheldonian Theatre seating arrangements made it extremely uncomfortable for me to try and take notes. Anyway, Dr. Priest didn’t finish his argument because he went over time!

Dr. John (- deeply ashamed, I didn’t catch his last name! – Biologist studying the genome) took the standard Atheist position. Although he did admit that he didn’t think it was possible to prove or disprove God. His line: Darwinian evolutionary theory supersedes the need for God. Prof. Craig merely pointed out that Dr. John (?) failed to give an account of how the finely tuned, incredibly complex conditions needed for Darwinian evolution came about.

My favourite quote of the night (from WLC):

“Why is now now?” Well that’s obvious because it’s now. A better question is “why is now? Why are we here in 2011?” The answer to that is because we had a beginning.

At the end Prof. Millican asked for there to be a show of hands for and against the belief in a creator God. Overwhelmingly the hands went up, including one of the panel, for belief in a creator God.

There was also some time for audience questions. At the end of one of the responses that Dr. Stephen Priest gave to a question from the audience he took the opportunity to applaud the:

Pure intelligence

of Prof. Criag.

It’s true that there’s not many who could have so confidently held their own the way Craig did last night. How does he do it? To answer that, we have to look at one of Criag’s responses to Dr. Daniel Cane’s criticism that Prof. Craig (and incidentally Prof. Dawkins) were both “too bold” in their assertions.

Prof. Craig responded with disarming honesty:

If I seem too bold, that is because I am genuinely convinced of the strengths of these arguments.

“I don’t believe William Lane Craig exists” proclaims Richard Dawkins

Asked to justify his assertion Prof. Dawkins argued:

“Apparently he’s a Philosopher but I’ve spoken to a wide and varied range of Atheist Philosophers from the likes of Oxford all the way to the likes of Cambridge and none of them have ever heard of him, let alone believe he exists.”

But he has a PhD from the University of Birmingham a red brick, Russell Group university that has produced eight Nobel prize winners.

University of Birmingham…hmm…is that in Eastern Europe? Look, I’ve got nothing against Arabs, I think it’s really admirable that they are imitating the UK isn’t it? But they will probably sell you a PhD for 100 Euros and throw in a Llama for good measure.

I saw William Lane Craig debate Stephen Law at Methodist Central Hall on 17th October. I said “hi” to him afterwards. Obviously, I believe he exists, I’ve met him.

Prof. Dawkins became very angry at this and shouted:

“How can you believe in someone who says the kind of things he says!? You’re not rational! You’re not moral! You should be humiliated, made to wear a dunce hat, paraded through the streets and excommunicated. You should not be able to walk five yards without someone spitting in your face because you’re so irrational! Shame on you! You shouldn’t even be able to work as someone who sweeps the streets! You shouldn’t be allowed to iron the clothes of someone who sweeps the streets! You can only clean the shoes of the person who irons the clothes of someone who sweeps the streets but only so that you’re not leaching from the state.”

Some critics have accused you of being overly angry and unpleasant, how do you respond to that?:

I don’t understand that. I am more pleasant than Mahatma Gandhi, seriously I am! I’m so nice, I make the teletubbies look diabolically evil. It’s just when I hear people teaching the sort of things that William Lane Craig (aka the Spaghetti Monster) teaches, especially to children I go ape. Properly ape. I’m like a rabid dog in a corner. Find me like that and I would spit venom into the eyes of Tinky Winky if he believed in William Lane Craig.

What do you make of William Lane Craig’s arguments?:

AAARRRRHHGGHH don’t mention his name! It burns my ears!

Ok, what do you make of WLC’s arguments?:

You mean his supposed arguments of the supposed WLC? Well obviously I’ve won haven’t I?

You’ve won? But you haven’t even debated with him:

Ha! You can’t lose a debate with someone who doesn’t exist can you? So I’ve won. I’m the winner, na na na-na na.

Will you be picking up the gauntlet at the Sheldonian Theatre on 25th October?:

That event doesn’t even exist, it’s not real, it’s not happening, I can’t hear you lalalalalalalalala.

"I am more pleasant than Mahatma Gandhi, seriously I am!" (pic source: http://tinyurl.com/5uscxco)

Disclaimer: Richard Dawkins has not actually said any of these things. This is a fictionalised interview for comedic purposes.

Prof. William Lane Craig Vs. Dr. Stephen Law – Does God Exist? (Methodist Central Hall, Westminster)

I was intrigued to go to Methodist Central Hall last night, not least because I was about to watch a fantastic debate but because the early Pentecostals used to use the hall for their meetings. Pentecostal history is an interest of mine. In addition, even though I’ve lived in London for a year now, I’ve never walked through Westminster so it was brilliant walking past Big Ben (or should it now be called Leaning Big Ben?) and the houses of parliament.

Methodist Central Hall, Westminster

I should state from the outset that I was rooting for Craig and even though I tried to keep an open mind, I inevitably lack objectivity.

I think Craig had an unfair advantage in that he knew how to speak into a microphone. No one told Law that in a debate context, when putting forward your argument, you ought not to mumble into your chest. I missed about 20% of what he said, at one point even Craig had to ask him to repeat himself and he was sitting right next to him.

The subject of the debate was “Does God Exist?” and clearly no one told Law this because the lynch pin of his argument was that there is no way of proving that God is good. If the debate topic was an exam question, Law would have failed because he didn’t answer the question. When challenged about this, Law responded “ah well, there is overwhelming evidence that God does not exist but I’ve chosen this one line of argument.” He also just happens to have a book out on the Evil God problem.

Law was remarkable for his lack of conviction. He stated and I use a direct quote “I change my mind from day to day on the reasons for why God does not exist.” He was challenged on how he could justify his belief in the existence of objective morals? His response after a long pause and finally throwing his arms up was “it just seems like there are.” This seemed like a case of situational expedience. Atheism becomes all the more repugnant when it is revealed that it is impossible to hold objective morals as an atheist and repugnance is not a good position to defend in a debate.

But what of the Evil God dilemma? This is in many ways quite clever. It doesn’t argue atheism, it just argues that there is no way of determining that God is good. Law continually repeated the same mantra, if you are arguing that the existence of good (with a little evil) proves the existence of a good God why shouldn’t the existence of evil and suffering (with a little good) also prove the existence of an evil God? Craig pointed out that he was not arguing for the existence of a good God on the basis of how much good or evil was in the world but that this was in fact irrelevant. He also pointed out that the very definition of “God” is that he is something that is worshipful. I think that Craig missed a trick here though because the truth is the only weapon in our armoury, for a good God over an evil God, is trust.

God sent his agent, who was good, the good agent taught us the way to God, the good agent told us that God was good and that he knew this because he was directly from God, that there was no difference between him and God and that he was in effect God. In order to believe that God is good, we have to trust the words of (the good agent) Jesus but until we are safely on the “other side” we cannot really be sure that it is not a big sick joke. Wouldn’t an evil God’s evil be all the more vile having masqueraded right up until the last that he was good? Something inside tells me that God is not evil, that darkness and destruction cannot be a more powerful force than light and creation. This is just intuition though and intuition is not an argument. The strength in Law’s argument, unlikely though it may be, is that you cannot prove that God is not evil. However, Law was at the wrong debate because the question was “Does God Exist?”

In contrast to Law, Craig provided two lines of argument for the existence of God: (1) That there are good reasons for believing in the existence of God and (2) that there is comparatively no good reasons for believing in the lack of the existence of God.

(1) Reasons for the existence of God.

(a) The Cosmological Argument: the universe exists, how did it come into being? Generally atheists argue that it has always existed, that it is infinite but this leads to metaphysical absurdities. For example, if you have an infinite number of coins and I say to you take away every third coin then how many coins do you have left? Infinity. So (infinity) – (infinity) = infinity? This is patently not the case. There is clearly a limited number of things in the universe, it is not infinite. Therefore, if the universe is not infinite it must have had an uncreated, timeless and all powerful cause. This is God.

Law’s response: throws his hands up “I don’t know why the universe exists.” [this is an exact quote of what he said, I'm not making it up].

(b) The moral argument. Objective morals exist. Child rape is wrong. It is no good saying that rape is just socially disadvantageous (an evolutionary moral argument), it is genuinely evil. Objective morals have to come from a higher being, a moral arbitrar, a superhuman judge. Otherwise, it is just one man’s opinion versus another.

Law’s response: he conceded that he did believe in objective morals, “because it just seems like there are.” [this too is an exact quote].

(c) The historical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection. The tomb was found empty, the body was missing, Jesus was later seen by many eye witnesses. Jesus resurrection was very un-jewish, unexpected, counter intuitive.

Law’s respsone: people believe all sorts of things. The reality is probably something more mundane. He then relayed an anecdote of an account of a strange glowing object spotted over a lake in America in the 1960s, this was reported in newspapers and by two policemen. It later turned out that this strange glowing object was the planet venus.

(2) There are comparatively no good reasons for believing that God does not exist. Cue Law’s irrelevant argument.

In his summary, Law plugged his latest book about the evil God problem (ah so that’s why he chose not to actually address the title of the debate).

Craig merely reiterated his arguments, rightly, pointing out that failure to sufficiently address his three reasons for the existence of God and failure to provide good reasons for not believing in God, in a debate context, counts as a concession.

Craig 1 – Law 0

Prof. Craig (left) me (right)

Fantastic Letter From A Christian To The Big Issue Re: Richard Dawkins

Great letter in The Big Issue this week, responding to an article on Richard Dawkins’ new book last week:

“I enjoy purchasing The Big Issue and chatting with the vendor, and always find something worth reading in each edition. I was interested to read your review of Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Magic of Reality ['In the beginning was the word...' October 3-9]. Once again he does not seem to have met any Christians other than those of the fundamentalist variety. I am a Christian, with scientific training and fascinated by evolutionary theory – and there are plenty of us about! Christians are not all like George W Bush: there are many for whom the fundamentalist position is quite untenable. Nor is it correct to assume that Christianity is dying out. Even in this country many still find their deepest needs being met for the first time by religion, and religious organisations have shown them love and compassion – often the way forward for the homeless and the addicted.“

Good for you Paul James from Aylsham in Norfolk!

Source: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/rro/lowres/rron807l.jpg

I too buy The Big Issue obviously. The vendors who sell the magazine have to buy each copy for £1 before they can sell it for £2. I initially started buying it for charity’s sake. Now I’ve gotten into the habit, there’s sections of the magazine that I look forward to reading. I enjoy the little summary on page 3 of the week: “good week for/bad week for,” I enjoy the “fruit of wisdom” quote, most recently they featured one from the late Steve Jobs. I enjoy their music, film and book reviews. I particularly look forward to the “5 books everybody should read before they die” feature which they include every week. A different person chooses the 5 books each time. Some of the interviews are brilliant. There are also features on the vendors, their honesty (particularly about their habits) is refreshing. There are of course some terrific success stories of some of the vendors who manage to climb their way into a better way of life from the starting point of selling the Big Issue. The Big Issue is good stuff and well worth the money, when I think about my initial motivations for buying it they seem rather patronising in retrospect.

 

My Little Exchange With the Prime Minister

It was Saturday morning. I was standing on the steps of St-Martin-in-the-Fields. I was an Usher at my friend’s wedding and I was on the look out for the bridal limo. It was still fairly quiet by Trafalgar Square standards. There was a stage being set up for some sort of event or other. On the steps of St Martin’s, instead of 60 odd tourists sitting, photographing, eating etc. it was just me and one dreadlocked bohemian.

St-Martin-in-the-Fields from Trafalgar Square with the National Portrait Gallery to the left.

David Cameron, his wife and two children approached from the Strand direction (to the south of St Martin’s). They were dressed normally and unaccompanied. I was momentarily stunned but composed myself to seize the opportunity:

“Good morning Mr Prime Minister”

he raised his hand and waved

“Good morning”

and they walked on. Dreadlocked bohemian suddenly wakes up, looks at the back of the Camerons walking away and then at me in disbelief.

“Yes” I say.

“That was the Prime Minister.”

No doubt, at the very moment that I greeted the Prime Minister, a plain clothed police man had my head in his cross hairs.

Genesis for Everyone Part 1 by John Goldingay – Review

As good as Tom Wright's New Testament series.

I’m guessing that a lot of people, like me, will buy a copy of John Goldingay’s Genesis for Everyone Part 1 having been inspired to do so by the successful New Testament for Everyone series by Tom Wright. I’m also guessing that a lot of people, like me, will be wondering one thing: are Goldingay’s Old Testament commentaries as good as Wright’s New Testament commentaries? Well, I’ve read Mathew for Everyone parts 1 & 2 and I’m half way through Mark for Everyone. I’ve also nearly finished Genesis for Everyone Part 1. I actually read Goldingay in the evening and Wright in the morning, (my wife reads Goldingay in the morning and Wright in the evening).

In my humble opinion, yes, Goldingay’s commentaries are as good as Wright’s. I like Genesis for Everyone because Goldingay is that terrific breed of Christian writer: a trustworthy scholar, with a critical eye but tempered with genuine faith that ensures he is never unnecessarily or overly deconstructive.

Juggling Granny

Keep your zimmer frame sonny. Stair lift? Ha! She’s been juggling before you were a twinkle in your mother’s eye.

Of all the sights I expected to see today, on my way to Golders Green Underground, a juggling granny is not one of them.

Lawn bowling is not for her.

I didn’t want to look juggling granny in the eye because she’s obviously not to be messed with but as I walked past, I did have quick glance over my shoulder and I think she may have been a “he.”

Minor Prophet – 1

I felt quite gloomy as I went to bed the other night. I was thinking about the new militant atheists and the relish with which religious belief is attacked (especially in the media). In the same way that Christians differ greatly on issues like: the age of the earth, freedom vs determinism and our stance on a whole ream of issues. So too, do atheists differ: some being completely opposed to any kind of supernatural belief system, others attack the institution instead of the individual (as if it were possible to separate them) and some advocate ridicule as a tool to be yielded against those who have chosen to believe in the supernatural (a bit inhumane).

Sometimes it’s just a casual, sneering, cutting remark on QI, or in a stand up show that is designed to belittle those who believe in a creator. It can be difficult not to take personally. The other extreme is a well thought through, carefully written speech or argument designed to win over listeners to their point of view. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchen, Stephen Fry, Tim Minchen, Phil Jupitus, Dara O’Brien and Ricky Gervais have all nailed their colours to the atheist mast. Intellectual, comedian, gay, rich, B-list, funny, sad, angry….atheist. Some of these guys are so funny and entertaining but they have to a greater or lesser extent invested energy in opposing religious organisation. Many of them organised against religious organisation. They should thank God, they’ve made a career in opposing Him. If there was no one left who believed then many of their books and their organisations would be quite redundant!

I fell asleep that night and dreamed that someone I was waiting to email me, emailed me back and apologised for emailing late. I’d only ever emailed this person once and had no idea what their emailing habits were. In the morning, for some reason, I told my wife that I’d had a dream that said person had emailed back and apologised for the delay. There and then, I logged onto my Smart Phone and checked my email. The person had emailed me and apologised for the late reply.

Knocking Off Early

I noticed this lampost (see below) on Fournier Street yesterday on my way to Christ church. It looked pretty dangerous and had apparently been like that for a few days. I resolved to tell the council about it as soon as I could but it was already past 5.30pm so I assumed no one would answer until the next day.

Not quite sure how this happened.

There was a concert at Christ church for part of the annual Spitalfields Music Festival. It was the last performance to take place at Christ church and there was a near sell out crowd. Everyone inside was hushed as the music began. A performance of 1h 40m with no interval. About 1h in there was a loud thudding noise, it was particularly loud up in the North gallery. Initially I thought it was one of the crowd and was about to go and have a quiet word but then I realised it was coming from outside.

Not a hi-tech solution then, nor a safe solution, nor a sensible solution.

Yes, the council had finally swung into action. Not with ladders or a cutting device no but with a large man with a 2×4. There were several complaints but the men were adamant that it was of the utmost urgency that they smash the top of the lamppost off because of safety concerns. I believe they had to whack it senseless for approximately 30 minutes before it came safely crashing down and smashed all over the pavement.

Overheard Conversations – 1

I was in Starbucks the other morning. It was quite early and quiet, I love drinking coffee on a quiet morning in Starbucks with no need to rush off anywhere. I was in there to do my “quiet time,” I’m working through Matthew for Everyone Part 2 by Tom Wright. These are excellent commentaries and I’ve already ordered Mark for Everyone in anticipation of finishing the one I’ve got.

I had sat in front of two business men. They were sitting opposite each other, on comfy chairs, hunched over some notes on the table between them. They were dressed in smart casuals, one of them had a laptop bag. As I supped my little cup of bliss I overheard them talking about something I would never have guessed they would be talking about…Jesus. They were saying things like “so they wanted to know if He was the Christ” and “ok but what it says in verse 23…” They were having a bible study!

My initial impressions were not wrong though because with the spiritual side of things pondered, the conversation shifted onto business matters. I overheard things like “we’ve got a budget worked out for the next 5 years” and “yeah so we’ll review it every quarter.”

A couple of businessmen who have their priorities in order: God first, business second.