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Does God Exist? William Lane Craig vs Daniel Came

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By all means, make your own stances on this. This video of William Lane Craig vs Daniel Came does look like a great debate that I am sure many people will enjoy. I myself have yet to finish watching along with many other debates and stuff but I will do as time permits.

Moreover, I have to say from the current information that I know about both of these people there is no denying that they're both great intellectual debates. I was also surprised to find out that Atheist and Oxford Don Daniel Came called Richard Dawkins out for being a coward some time ago for not debating William Lane Graig. I believe that both of these guys in the video debate are warranted of respect and admiration at least for their debating ability.

My own position on this debate as to whether God exists or not is that while we can't prove the non-existence of a creator I believe there are good reasons to believe God doesn't exist.

Now over to you.










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  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -   edited June 2019

    I watched the video it’s a good question and answer session. Lane Craig is a good debater and has impressive intellectual skills unfortunately his arguments although well presented are the same old arguments presented in his own inimitable way.


    He has been accused of intellectual dishonesty more than once where he will restate his opponents position into something it’s not here is typical example from a poster on reddit


     ......Before today, I was not a fan of William Lane Craig, I'd even go so far as to say that I didn't respect him, but he sure took it a big step further in the debate I watched today. He was debating a professor named Michael Begon (yet another example of Craig, the polished, well-practiced debater, having a debate with someone who doesn't seem to have any notable experience debating), and during the audience question time, an audience member asked Begon what evidence he would accept for the existence of God.

    While Begon did first say that he couldn't really pin down anything specific, he quickly followed that by saying, "In fact, I'm open-minded; I'll accept anything. I'm not restricting you, bring forward anything you'd like that satisfies the normal rules of evidence, and I'll believe you." In Craig's rebuttal, with the most thorough exuberance I have EVER heard (seriously, see for yourself), he rhetorically asked the questioner, "You still haven't heard the answer, have you? It's astonishing! It's just astonishing! You ask, what are the standards of evidence it would take to prove to you that God exists, and no answer is forthcoming. Why? Because atheism is a firm, fixed belief that is not open to reason or evidence."

    Now, look again at what Begon actually said, just mere, scant moments before Craig went off on his little projection-filled rant: "bring forward anything you'd like that satisfies the normal rules of evidence, and I'll believe you." Does that sound like a firm, fixed belief that is not open to reason or evidence? What a load of smugly self-satisfied . I don't even know why I'm surprised by that at this point, but I thought this was way beyond the pale, even for him.

    There was a postI made a week ago, where I referenced this way that he laughs sometimes, saying "There are times when he's presenting an argument or rebutting someone else's argument in a debate, there's this particular smug way he has of laughing. When you look at where he is from our perspective, seeing it from that filter, it really makes it seem like that laugh is the desperate glee of a person who's basically saying, 'isn't it great that this gives me a rationalization to not lie awake at night wondering if everything I've built my life around is ?'" Never has that seemed more desperately, pathetically true than this time.


    Every one  of his arguments are circular as they all take as a starting point that a god does exist which is still an unproven.


    I find it somewhat amusing that Craig brushes away the Holocaust and such events when we ask how a good god could allow such , his claim we cannot know the will of god and he allows such for a greater good to me is pretty scary.


    Imagine if god appeared on earth and asked his followers to wipe out torture and kill others they would surely do it as one cannot know the will of god and he’s only asking so as to achieve a greater good , this leaves these people following a celestial tyrant 


    In this world  the difference with you and I as moral agents if we see a child being sexually abused we would surely intervene at risk to ourselves to save a child , the Christian god who can does not , but allegedly punishes the perpetrator in the next life that is unless he converts and repents on his death bed where his sins are washed away 


    Lane Craig’s favorite go to argument is DCT , Rational Wiki neatly summarizes all his arguments and takes them apart easily ......


    According to divine command theory God allows necessary evil as a part of His plan and whatever God commands must be the morally correct course of action. Therefore, if/when God endorses genocide, infanticide, animal sacrifice, slavery, or rape, those things are good, whereas if/when he forbids eating certain foods or working on certain days or having certain kinds of kinky sex, those things immediately become bad. This makes divine command theory a subjective (from God's point of view) and arbitrary theory of morals as the morality of a given action can change at God's whim. Objections like "God wouldn't do that" don't help at all because, as Craig himself has highlighted, examples can readily be found in the very scriptures that Craig bases his religious beliefs on.

    Whether divine command theory is true or not (and there seems to be no reason to think that it is), it is often not an effective method of settling moral dilemmas. It offers no clear distinctions for when a "divine dispensation" applies (or even how we can be sure that Craig's God and holy bookare presenting us with the correct divine get-out-of-jail-free card), a problem exacerbated when religious texts contain a host of conflicting, arbitrary, or excessively specific rules. These rules rarely allow a clear method of generalizing from scripture to every possible or even to any concrete situation, so a believer is forced to do much the same thing that an atheist does, which is to work out moral principles and ideas for herself. Often, the fact that the believer is bound to respect certain statements as absolute truth makes this process even harder, because those statements may not make good sense, or may make sense in most situations but be absurd in others. Divine command theory thus fails to provide moral guidance for much the same reason that religions often fail to provide moral guidance.



    Philosopher Stephen Law presented William Lane Craig with The Evil god Challenge to his good God argument a piece I always enjoy watching it’s only 10 minutes long https://youtu.be/TU54EYkap5Q

    PlaffelvohfenZeusAres42Zombieguy1987
  • Well, I have just watched this Q&A which was rather interesting. Now, I still have yet to watch the full debate but I will do as time permits. Further, if memory serves me correctly it was William Lane Craig that tried using mathematics to prove the existence of God. Now I can't remember exactly if it was Danial Came of some other Professor who simply said: "really? You're seriously trying to prove the existence of God via mathematics?" I am going to assume at that point that his position in the debate had begun to weaken.


    Moreover, from the little bits I have watched so far from Dr. Craig is I have noticed he tends to say a lot that the burden of proof is on the Atheist to prove the non-existence of God, and this is a typical response as far as I have noticed by a lot of theists when the Atheist turns around and that there really isn't any sufficient evidence to believe the existence of God.

    Now, if we assume that in the case of God's existence the burden of proof is on the Atheist to prove the non-existence of God then we need to assume that to all unfalsifiable beliefs including unicorns, vampires, dragons, etc. By contrast, if we all assume including the Theists that the burden of proof is on proving God's existence then we have to apply that to all unfalsifiable beliefs too. The point being here is that it seems unsound for either Theist or Atheist to demand the proof of something that is not falsifiable; something that cannot be measured and/or adequately tested.  

    Furthermore, another problem I do find with the demanding of proof of the non-existence of God is the implicit implication on the Theist that God must exist purely because there is no evidence to say otherwise, which I will contend is a fallacious argument. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and this applies to non-existence as well as existence. 

    With all this being said I do believe there are very good reasons to not believe in at least a religious kind of God. With regard to intelligent design, however, that is a whole different debate altogether.

    For the full debate of William Lane Craig and Daniel Came see here:





  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    Yes Craig constantly switches the burden of proof back on the Atheist little realizing that people like me merely claim the “we have not seen sufficient evidence to justify a belief in a god until then we a lack belief in such” this drives people like him mad as the burden is totally on him

    Rational Wiki 

    His mathematical argument is a new and pretty dreadful which demonstrates he’s still looking for that “killer” argument here it is .......

    This is a new "argument" from Craig, which he elaborated upon in a January 10th, 2015 radio debate with atheist British philosopher Daniel Came.[32] In the past, he cited Professor Peter Higgs (overlooking the fact that Dr. Higgs is an atheist) and his theoretical prediction of the Higgs boson. At its heart, however, this is a variant of Craig’s teleological argument as it follows the same line of claiming that because certain constants (or here, mathematical equations describing real world phenomena) exist, they must have been put in place by some sort of divine clockmaker. Craig's argument has been answered -- the history of Science, physics, in particular, is littered with dead theories, all of which are completely mathematically coherent and yet have been falsified and disproved. For instance, there are at least a dozen or so alternative models of gravitation that compete with General Relativity, all of which are mathematically coherent and yet they are not accepted (such as MOND, Modified Newtonian Dynamics), because the Universe simply does not work that way. From an episode of the original Star Trek, "the Spectre Of The Gun", there is a great quote from Mr. Spock (no doubt put there by Gene Roddenberry), "Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. Where the laws do not operate, there is no reality..."[33] Of course, the Universe must operate according to some mathematical principles; if it did not, we would not be here. Craig’s later use of this argument in his 2016 debate with Kevin Scharp[34] in Craig’s familiar, tripartite, formal proof format:

    1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence.
    2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence.
    3. Therefore, God exists.

    This makes it even clearer how weak this argument is as neither of the premises are in any way certain or even clear (what do we mean by ”happy coincidence” and is this really the only alternative to Goddidit?). Craig is basically coupling Paley’s old “obvious design” argument with the kind of presuppositionalist “I’m right by definition” (aka the transcendental argument for God or TAG) argument used by the likes of Sye Ten Bruggencate. Coupling two, bad arguments does simply not make for a single, combined, good one.



    A person who merely states they believe in a god without a specific religion actually have a better position because they are not referencing sacred books , miracles and varied teachings they just feel something created our universe and that’s more or less it 

    ZeusAres42
  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited June 2019

    I am beginning to think that the most probable reason why Richard Dawkins did refuse to debate him if he did that is, is because Richard Dawkins probably thought a debate with someone like this is futile.

    Another thing is that just from the little bit I have watched of the video so far is that What Craig is debating is for the existence of an intelligent design which is completely different than that of a theistic diety.

    It's like he is equivocating intelligent design arguments with theistic arguments for a Christian God.
    DeePlaffelvohfen



  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    Craig uses 5 go to arguments in his numerous debates, he’s incredibly clever at manipulating audiences and he does so when he criticizes opponents by laughing and raising his voice when he gets to the point of his criticism, he a very skilled debater at this point and excellent at playing to the audience.

    Dawkins I think if he debated Craig would lift his glasses  and peer at Craig after each utterance in astonishment at what he’s just heard , I think Dawkins now realizes debating types like Craig is a complete waste of time.

    Craig descends into absurdity when he starts quoting the Bible something he rarely does now in fairness.


    One question Zeus why the irrelevant on my last post did I miss something?

  • That's not irrelevant. That's informative.
    Dee



  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42

    My apologies, I thought my response may have been inadequate in some way , thanks for that 
  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited July 2019

    This was rather amusing: William Lane Craig against Theoretical Physicist who basically just rips Dr. Craig's argument apart.

    The irony of it is though in a later video Dr. Craig seem as if he believes he was superior in that debate. I guess some kind of Dunning-Kruger effect going on there.


    AlexOland



  • On another note, Richard Dawkins did actually appear on a debate against William Lane Craig in 4-panel debate:

    I did like some of Michael Shermer's comebacks who seemed to be a little less diplomatic than some of the others lol. 



  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres

    Thanks a lot for that what an kicking very amusing watching Craig squirm. Regarding your original video I’m always struck by Craig defending the biblical god as in his reasoning for allowing the Holocaust , if he claims we cannot know his reasoning for allowing such an atrocity could anything actually convince you it was for a greater moral good?

    The difference with you and I is if we  saw a girl being raped we would intervene god does not ,he  observes and does nothing only the religiously indoctrinated  accepts this , if you and I observed a rapist raping a girl and merely watched we would (rightly) be called cowardly beasts yet an entity millions of times more powerful than us is prayed to for doing nothing.
  • LogicVaultLogicVault 123 Pts   -  
    The existence of a god or lack of is not provable. Complete waste of time discussing it.
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