Summations Only

Before I watch this, is it fair to say that John Carson Lennox is a bioethicist and mathematician? Not a biologist or physicist or anything like that? Does he also accept the fact that our Universe is around 13.77 billion years old, the earth is around 5.54 billion years and evolutionary theory? He seems to be a bit underqualified to discuss the Big Bang, age of the Universe, age of the earth or anything like that.

robert writes: How could it be easy for me if Lennox does nothing for you?

Don't blame me or Lennox, you over-sold the story that he 'destroyed' Dawkins and Hitch. I've watched the Dawkins video and I started watching Hitch. He destroys neither. Both use the same arguments and get the same response and counter arguments that have been used for decades.

No new info will be presented from either side, so there is no rational reason to justify:

Certainly there'll be no new arguments for the 'Christ lives!' side, there can't be. But science and society will continue to whittle away at your silly ideas until you're pretty much invisible. This has been happening for a long time now.

2. The discussions themselves are divisive and toxic

I thought that they were particularly well mannered and intelligent. I accept that you hate the entire process of debate and discussion but that's just your prejudice.

and are yet another vehicle for the enemy to spread hate and discord

Conventional, medaeval religious bollox.

All I can do is deliver the following message: All you need to do is accept Christ. This message is open to literally anyone of any creed faith orientation / anything. For those who refuse to hear, I give them my prayers and let almighty God do His work.

Take it to your church.

How could it be easy for me if Lennox does nothing for you?

You're his champion. Your duty is to defend his honor in all things. But you can't seem to defend as much as bluster.

No new info will be presented from either side, so there is no rational reason to justify

Not from your side, we understand that. Some folks have been at this for decades and, robertleva, you haven't presented anything already destroyed generations ago.

The other side, the good guy side, they get all kinds of new info all the time. It's their job.

The discussions themselves are divisive and toxic and are yet another vehicle for the enemy to spread hate and discord.

You mean someone will disagree with your world view and you find that hateful, divisive, toxic. To you, of course it is. You're a theist.

You won't even consider opposition, harsh or otherwise. We are the enemy, demons, devils, not to be seen, not to be heard, to be opposed with all power.

You asked in another thread why anti-theist. This level of abject disregard and intolerance of human differences, dehumanizing, spiteful, capricious, that your theism represents is an excellent example of why. And that is only one among many millions of reasons why.

You call opposition hate. And we all know what hate does in religion.

All I can do is deliver the following message: All you need to do is accept Christ. This message is open to literally anyone of any creed faith orientation / anything. For those who refuse to hear, I give them my prayers and let almighty God do His work.

Take it to your church.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

And now I've watched the Hitch/Lennox.

Not only does Lennox not destroy Hitch, Hitch talks Lennox out of the argument who really just has to return again and again to the Phat and Faith defence of "I don't care what you say, this is what I believe".

Frankly, all I know about Lennox is how he eagerly propped up Bill Barr's gross bastardization of law and order and the "Rule of Law" in this country. That is all I could ever need to know about Lennox and his evil intent.

I seem to recall that Faith was so very much in lust over Lennox. Not much of a recommendation.

Just who is that idiot, anyway?

RL writes: I think I see where the thread is going so I will try to summarize / predict the overall outcome: Dawkins fails to convince the faithful. Lennox fails to convince the unfaithful.

Well thats a spoiler alert! I would say it slightly differently, though.

Dawkins fails to impress those who adhere to the argument from authority.(SOURCE, though dwise1 has a point in that many creationists make up their own science and have to make it fit since God has never directly taught us anything that we thus never need to learn regarding science)

Lennox fails to impress the critically thinking skeptics who adhere to the argument from evidence. (Objective Applicable Facts over Strongly held Beliefs...CONTENT)

I have just started watching the debate.

---

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
***
“…far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise itself is validated by his existence.”- Dr.John Lennox

“The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.”
- Criss Jami, Killo

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.” — Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You
(1894).

Dawkins fails to impress ME - or Percy. You’ve had the opportunity to read my post on the first thesis, and he doesn’t do much better on the second.

Two Prima Donnas producing a reality show debate farce. Both simply misrepresenting reality; there was no true debate and nothing but two folk parading for their crew.

RL writes: The discussions themselves are divisive and toxic and are yet another vehicle for the enemy to spread hate and discord.

AZ writes: You mean someone will disagree with your world view and you find that hateful, divisive, toxic. To you, of course it is. You're a theist. You won't even consider opposition, harsh or otherwise. We are the enemy, demons, devils, not to be seen, not to be heard, to be opposed with all power.

One point which I just thought of is my response to the question of why God even allowed Satan to exist. According to popular mythos and dogma, Satan was once Lucifer, one of three main Arch-Angels that were in effect Gods spirit beings in charge of the angelic realm. The other two were Gabriel and Michael.

So Lucifer allegedly rebelled. (God would have had to foreknowing made it possible to rebel to begin with) and took 1/3 of the angelic realm with him.

So why did God allow potential evil to become actualized through this rebellion?

Here is a clue. Satan is known as the Tempter. He is good at tempting or conning. (convincing) And another word for tempting is tempering.

Industrial Metallurgists,LLC writes: Why Temper Through Hardened Steel Imagine you’re a warrior during the middle ages and it’s time to get a new sword. So, you go to a blacksmith to buy a sharp, shiny long sword. A few weeks later you’re in a battle, fighting at the front of the shield wall. You take a huge swing at the enemy, who meets your blow with his sword, and your sword shatters into several pieces. Unfortunately for you, your blacksmith outsourced a batch of swords to a blacksmith on the other side of town who didn’t have time to temper the swords. As a result, the swords were strong, but brittle. Their lack of toughness meant that they could not absorb much of an impact before fracturing.

My conclusion? Satan was allowed to exist in order to temper humans. To make them stronger. Thats my 2 cents.

In addition to the title this issue also covers the late Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of NOMA - the idea that science and religion have completely separate domains.

After rebutting Lennox arguments from the first thesis Dawkins goes on to discuss the conflict over creationism - but in terms of a disagreement within the atheist community. It’s relevant to material from his book quoted at the start of this segment, but a poor use of his limited time. He goes on to argue that science is the best way to understand our physical universe and events within it - and that religion does indeed intrude into that domain. Then he runs out of time before getting to the main point.

Lennox agrees with Dawkins on NOMA. Then he goes on to address the main point where Dawkins has failed - again - to do so.

His first assertion is that atheists must believe that the mind is purely material and that this undermines the idea that our minds could be reliable. Unfortunately for him the mere possibility that our minds are unreliable is insufficient - and really that doubt goes back to Descartes (a Christian) in the 17th Century. Even worse for him, science indicates that our minds are indeed based in the material so we have an example of science supporting atheism. There’s a lot more that could be said on this but it doesn’t belong here.

Then he asserts:

An argument that purports to derive rationality from irrationality doesn’t even rise in my opinion to the dignity of being an intelligible delusion. It is logically incoherent

Which - even ignoring his use of “irrational” where “non-rational” is required - is mistaking a fallacy of composition for a logical truth. Even if it’s meant as hyperbole it’s not a good look.

He argues that theism offers a guarantee that the universe can be rationally understood but that really fails to address the real problem.

Fine-tuning is mentioned but that’s really better covered in the next point.

His final point is this:

Now what I find very interesting is this: the Bible is frequently dismissed as being anti-scientific because it makes no predictions. Oh no, that’s incorrect! It makes a brilliant prediction! For centuries it’s been saying there was a beginning

I have never seen this “frequent” objection and it is silly anyway. If anybody actually made it, it would be best dismissed by pointing out that the Bible is not a work of science. Unfortunately Lennox implicitly argued that it IS (should scientists also seriously consider Jacob’s exercises in livestock breeding?). And for no gain - as Dawkins points out in his rebuttal a 50-50 guess is not a great success (it’s nowhere near statistical significance!). Even worse, it is far from clear that the Bible does say that the universe has a beginning. The Primordial Ocean is right there at the start of Genesis. This is one of the most spectacular cases of shooting oneself in the foot I’ve seen.

Dawkins comes out ahead here - but not through his own completely inadequate efforts.

Satan was the TESTER not Tempter. Satan only did what God told him to do.

PaulK writes: Dawkins fails to impress ME

And me. He should stick to biology. I was very impressed with the Selfish Gene back in the day. At least he managed to stir the hornet's nest.

well if thats the case, God told him to rebel

Well remember that most of the rebellion nonsense is not Biblical but Operatic in origin.

... , though dwise1 has a point in that many creationists make up their own science and have to make it fit since God has never directly taught us anything that we thus never need to learn regarding science)

Huh? I have studied more than a dozen human languages (but only speak five ... six if I can bring my Russian up to speed) and about the same number of computer languages. Parsing statements is very important in both endeavors.

What you said did not parse.

What were you trying to say with that?

 
Now, actual creationists (ie, those who believe in the actual Christian god who is Sovereign over Nature, unlike the creationist and ID god, the God of the Gaps, who is destroyed by knowledge and must hide in fear of Nature) would believe that their god did indeed create the universe to function in the way we find it to function. Thus when science discovers how the universe works, then an actual creationist would see that as science discovering what their god had done. And when we discover naturalistic explanations for how something works or originated, then actual creationists would see that as their god working through the very natural processes that He had created.

No conflict between creation and evolution.

But these other creationists do no believe in the Christian god, but rather in the false theology of the God of the Gaps. They see science as the enemy of their religion because their religion demands that reality doesn't exist in order to allow their god to exist. Which means that they believe that science is trying to disprove God -- what foolishness! They believe that their god only works through supernatural acts, so any naturalistic explanation for anything is seen as opposing their god.

It is only when religion opposes reality that there is conflict with science.