William Lane Craig on Richard Dawkins’ argument for the improbability of God’s existence
Posted on 08 March 2011, 3:49
William Lane Craig on Richard Dawkins’ argument for the improbability of God’s existence based on the infinite regress of designers.
William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher and seasoned debater, who in the above brief video refutes (correctly in my opinion) Richard Dawkins’ claim that the temptation to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself raises the larger question of who designed the designer (implying that if you have no explanation for the designer, you have not explained anything).
Craig’s argument there doesn’t assume the truth of Christianity, so atheists and agnostics could agree with him in his specific and compelling refutation of Dawkins’ argument.
Personally, I think the flaws of Dawkins’ argument are pretty obvious, and I doubt any rational person would take it seriously. Even a superficial analysis of Dawkins’ argument reveals its extreme weakness.
Only raving and uncritical atheists would accept and repeat Dawkins’ argument; but any thoughtful person, be atheist, agnostic or theist, would recognize the extreme weakness of that objection.
Even though I’m not convinced of the Christian God’s existence, sometimes I wonder why some prominent atheists use so silly and weak arguments against the idea of God. It makes me think their case against it is very weak, so they have to make purely rhetorical points aimed at a highly biased, credulous and uncritical atheist audience which will swallow whatever anti-theistic fallacy they hear, specially if it’s defended by a prominent scientist and presented in (pseudo) scientific jargon.
It gives you an insight of the actual intellectual level, rationality and honesty of many atheists and especially of Dawkins’ followers.
By the way, and this is only another evidence of Dawkins’ intellectual dishonesty (and by implication, of the uncritical thinking, credulity and irrationality of his followers), in his second debate with John Lennox, Dawkins confessed to Journalist Melanie Phillips that “rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet.”
In other words, Dawkins is accepting the possibility of intelligent design in the origin of life on Earth by aliens!
But leaving aside that, if Dawkins and his followers were logically consistent and rational, they should apply the same or similar Dawkins’ anti-God argument to his own alien-based intelligent design argument: attributing the appearance of design to an actual alien design about the origin of life on Earth itself raises the larger question of who designed the aliens! Therefore, Dawkins’ theory of the possible extraterrestrial (and intelligently created) origin of life on Earth explains nothing!
It proves that Dawkins is an anti-God propagandist, not a serious and careful thinker. He wants atheism be true, regardless of whether his anti-God argument destroys his other beliefs too. His arguments are an a posteriori rationalization of his atheist beliefs, not a conclusion based on the evidence. It’s pure ideologically and emotionally grounded atheistic wishful thinking.
He doesn’t have problems with intelligent design as an explanation of the origin of life on Earth; his problem is with the supernatural (i.e. God based) origin of that design. Therefore, his real motivation is materialistic atheism, not evidence-based science (in fact, the “theory” of intelligent aliens as the creators of life on Earth has no evidence at all. But Dawkins is “open” to it because it can explains the origin of life on Earth without appealing to God and, therefore, it serves and it’s useful for his atheistic purposes!).
Links of interest:
-Christian philosopher Peter Williams’ review of Dawkins’ The God Delusion
-Peter Williams on Dawkins’ concepts of “Design” and “Designoid”
“Life After Death – The Communicator” by Paul Beard – If the telephone rings, naturally the caller is expected to identify himself. In post-mortem communication, necessitating something far more complex than a telephone, it is not enough to seek the speakers identity. One needs to estimate also as far as is possible his present status and stature. This involves a number of factors, overlapping and hard to keep separate, each bringing its own kind of difficulty. Four such factors can readily be named. Read here
