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Richard Dawkins Meets Dr. Craig

January 16, 2011     Time: 00:21:25
Richard Dawkins Meets Dr. Craig

Summary

[2]William Lane Craig discusses Richard Dawkins and La Ciudad de las Ideas.

Transcript Richard Dawkins Meets Dr. Craig

 

Kevin Harris: Thank you for joining us on the podcast. It's Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I'm Kevin Harris having a conversation with Bill about something that stunned us all, I think, Bill, and that was an encounter with Richard Dawkins in Mexico—very interesting event called “City of Ideas.” Now, the reason some of us are stunned is because we who've followed your career have wanted for the sake of a lot of people who are Richard Dawkins' fans – and he's a best-selling author and one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, and so on – to get together with you, either privately or publicly. And it happened somewhat at this event. Talk a little bit about this event in Mexico.

Dr. Craig: Well this was a very interesting conference held near Mexico City in a city call Puebla, which is, I think, the fourth largest city of Mexico. It's built on the so-called TED conferences here in the United States, which feature very prominent scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and so forth, speaking on issues of the day. And this was the third such City of Ideas conference held in Mexico. And at last year's conference, as part of the proceedings, they hosted a debate on the existence of God that featured Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza, and others. And this year they contacted me about participating in a debate with three persons on one side and three persons on the other side on the topic “Does the universe have a purpose?” And I thought, well, this sounds really worth while, depending on who's involved in it. And they said that on the one side would be Michael Shermer and another fellow whom I didn't know – Matt Ridley – and then Michio Kaku, the famous theoretical physicist. And I thought, well, those are good opponents. And I said, “In order for me to participate I want to have some input on who would be on our side.” And they said, fine, fine. So I said, “How about my colleague Douglas Gievett from Talbot?” And they said, “Great, we'll get Douglas Gievett.” And then they had already obtained a young rabbi from Los Angeles named David Wolpi, and so I didn't really have any control over his role in it—he had already agreed. And so Doug and I and David were teamed up on the pro side saying, yes, the universe has a purpose. And then the other side was the team saying the universe had no purpose. And so we attempted to build a case for our side of the debate where, to answer the question it seemed to me that the answer was one of those things: “Well, it all depends.” It all depends namely on whether God exists. If God exists the universe has a purpose. If God does not exist then the universe does not have a purpose.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, that's what it comes down to.

Dr. Craig: Well, I think so. And so those were the two contentions that we put forward in our side of the debate and that we said we would defend, and staking out our claim there.

Kevin Harris: On the other side, then, Richard Dawkins came. Talk a little bit, before we get into the exchange, what was the format of this? It seemed to be very fast paced.

Dr. Craig: Well, this was the surprise, Kevin. I got to Mexico City and the night before the conference was to begin Professor Wermer, the organizer, had a reception in his very beautiful home there in the city. And while we were talking he suddenly says to me, “Oh, by the way, Michio Kaku decided not to participate in the debate. He says that he's a waffler, as he put it; he doesn't have any strong views on this subject and so he'd prefer not to participate.” And he said, “So Richard Dawkins is going to be in his place.” And you could have knocked me over. [laughter] I just couldn’t believe my ears. I said, “Richard Dawkins has agreed to be on this panel?” And he said, “Well, yes.” He didn't seem to think that this was unusual or anything at all, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this just changes everything.” And you could imagine my mind began to race because I thought, how am I going to alter my presentation so as to interact effectively with Dawkins' work? I mean, I usually think about who my opponents are so that I can connect with them rightly.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Craig: And now suddenly it was changed, it was of all people Richard Dawkins. Well, later that evening at the reception at the hotel in walks Richard Dawkins, and I recognized him immediately. [1] And I saw that the direction he was moving across the room would take him right past me. So as he got near to me I stuck out my hand and I said, “Hello, I'm Bill Craig. Pleased to meet you,” and introduced myself, and we shook hands. And then I said, “I'm surprised to find that you are on the panel for the debate.” And he said, “And why not?” And I said, “Well, because you've always refused to debate me in the past.” And all of a sudden – you know – his demeanor just completely changed, and he says, “I don't consider this to be a debate with you. The Mexicans invited me to participate, and I accepted,” and he turned away. And I said, “Well, I hope we have a good discussion.” And he said, “I consider that very unlikely,” and just walked off.

Kevin Harris: Just walked away—huh?

Dr. Craig: And I thought, oh my goodness, this is really going to be interesting. So that was my first encounter with Richard Dawkins.

Kevin Harris: Rather icy.

Dr. Craig: Oh, very much; it was very testy. And so the debate format—well, that was really interesting, that you asked about. Because there were six people in the debate the speeches had to be very short. And Professor Wermer had told us they would only be four minutes long for opening statements, two minute rebuttals, and one minute closing statements. Well, if you've ever tried to say anything substantive in four minutes, Kevin, you know how difficult it is. But I had prepared a four minute opening statement. Well, just minutes before the debate Wermer says, “Well, what I think we'll do is have six minute opening statements, and three minute rebuttals and one and half minute closing statements.” So suddenly we had a little extra time. And that enabled me, then, to work in some extra material, including a quote from Richard Dawkins that I had from memory to connect more with what he was going to say. And it really worked out well. We could choose who would go first on our team, and we decided I would go first to lay out the contentions, David Wolpi would go second to extend the case and build on it, and then Doug Gievett would be the anchorman to sum the debate up and bring the threads together to draw a conclusion. And then they flipped a coin to determine which side went first, and the atheist side won the coin toss. And so Matthew Ridley lead off for them, and then I lead off for our team. And this strategy just really, really, worked beautifully. David, Doug, and I were ourselves very shocked by how well we tag-teamed together, even though we had never done this before – we had never debated together – but we really worked well with each other. David really connected emotionally with the audience. He, I think, was the speaker on our team that the audience most really resonated with. And Doug did a brilliant job of summation, of just drawing the different threads of the debate together and bringing it to a close, and showed how we carried our contention. So it was really – despite the bizarre format – I felt it was a very good event.

Kevin Harris: Maybe it will lead to further exchanges where you'll have a little more time to develop the case.

Dr. Craig: Well, I hope it will. It would be wonderful to have the opportunity to do this again in the future at similar conferences, or to do something one-on-one with Richard Dawkins—which would really be exciting.

Kevin Harris: Sure.

Dr. Craig: We have a U.K. speaking tour, which is being planned for October of 2011, and it would be wonderful to have a dialogue or debate with Professor Dawkins in Central Hall, London—similar to my debate with Lewis Wolpert a couple of years ago.

Kevin Harris: It would be good because a lot of people think that he's unmatched, and that he's the pinnacle of the secular movement, to the extent that he is almost like a guru to many people in his best-selling work.

Dr. Craig: He really has become an almost iconic figure to some folks. In fact at this debate in Mexico City he gave a paper before the debate, a lecture, stand alone lecture, and, Kevin, it was the most hateful attack upon religious belief that I think I've ever heard any speaker give. It was full of insults to the Virgin Mary, and insulting our Lady of Guadeloupe, and other things that are in Mexican culture revered. I mean, it was really very insulting in certain ways. And he didn't have any good arguments against apparitions of the Virgin Mary—they were just insults. And yet when he finished I would say forty percent of the audience stood in a standing ovation for this speech. Now, sixty percent, I'd say, remained seated, and I really respected them for that because – you know – when part of an audience begins to rise to its feet there's tremendous pressure for everyone to rise in the standing ovation. But over half the audience didn't join the standing ovation. But nevertheless I thought, what an incredible impact this man is having, that here in Mexico, in a language that he does not speak, nevertheless, so many of these young people at this conference would idolize him and give him a standing ovation for this dreadful, hateful, speech that he gave about the evils of faith and the glories of science.

Kevin Harris: Oh boy, and another thing is because Dawkins, well, he's all over the talking-head shows. The major news outlets have him on all the time, even some of the popular shows. Of course, Bill Maher's show, and so on—he's on. And so he is in a sense kind of has a rockstar image like that. Michael Shermer, he was one of the first skeptic guys that Donahue and Oprah and others would bring in at the dawn of all the T.V. talk shows, he was always the smart, skeptical guy to come in.

Dr. Craig: Yes, and I have to say, Kevin, I owe Michael Shermer one here because it was through Shermer that I got the invitation to come to the City of Ideas conference. Shermer was in the debate last year, and they said to him, “whom can we get to represent the theistic side?” And Michael Shermer says, “why don't you get William Lane Craig—he's a good debater.” And so that's how I got the invitation, and then I asked them to get Doug Gievett to come, who had debated Shermer umpteen times in the past. And so it was a cast of familiar characters in that sense.

Kevin Harris: Bill, this brings up an issue that someone wrote to us at ReasonableFaith.org, and basically they said all of these guys like Dawkins are known because they're on all these T.V. outlets. Why aren’t you more known, Bill?

Dr. Craig: Yeah, I saw somebody in the forum recently said, “Who's ever heard of William Lane Craig outside of this forum?” And all I can say is, Kevin, we've tried. I'd love to be on some of these. I have been on 20/20 with Elizabeth Vargas, but it didn't lead into any further invitations. I don't know why. It's just my naivete; I don't know how to break into that sphere of influence. I'm an academic—I'm not a public relations guy, and so I don't know the ropes. But one of the reasons we founded Reasonable Faith, frankly, Kevin, was because I felt that for twenty-five years I've been involved in this kind of work and ministry, and yet it transpired in a corner. And yet through Reasonable Faith this has been like a megaphone to get this material out to the world. And our goal with Reasonable Faith – as I've shared in our newsletters – over the next ten years I would like to see this website grow so that by 2020 we will be pulling in a million unique visitors per month—that's the vision I have for this ministry. And God willing that's what we're going to strive to do.

Kevin Harris: And by God's grace I know that we will. And we all know that media outlets, they want sensationalism and clash quite often. And so if they have an atheist on, or a skeptic or an agnostic, or someone like that they usually try to get someone who's a real fiery fundamentalist so that they'll have a good program with clash and show, and so on. They certainly don't usually try to get somebody – and I'm not being conspiratorial, it's just years of observing, and you know I'm right – they don't want to get a Christian or someone on the theist side who is reasonable.

Dr. Craig: Right.

Kevin Harris: How our audience can help is to write intelligent, kind letters to media outlets, and help us get the word out that you would be a good representative to speak to some of the issues that they are addressing. And when they bring a heavy hitter on, that William Lane Craig needs to be considered, as well. I really think that that's the truth. You need to be in everybody's roladex. And so people can help us with this, and I would like to see that happen. But often it's because, Bill, you're just a little too reasonable, and they want somebody who's a little more . . .

Dr. Craig: [laughter] Yeah, well I can't compromise on that.

Kevin Harris: Absolutely; absolutely. Well, the case that they laid out—was it that the universe was purposeless?

Dr. Craig: Well, that was where they started from; after all they were defending the negative position, the answer to the question would be, no, the universe doesn't have a purpose. But it seemed that midway through the debate they shifted ground, and then started claiming, well, we can create a purpose for our lives, and in that way the universe can have a purpose, and we can make up our own purpose—to which we responded that that's no different than just having the illusion of purpose, [3] that there really is no purpose to the universe but you just have the subjective illusion of purpose. And of course we wouldn’t deny that. You can make it the purpose of your life to hit sixty home runs in the major leagues, or to be a doctor, or to be a crack addict. You can make anything to be the subjective purpose of your life—but that's not really the purpose of you life. Really, in the grand scheme of things, if atheism is true, your life has no purpose whatsoever. And no matter what you do everything will end up the same, it will perish in the ultimate heat death of the cosmos. So they were trying, I think, to have their cake and eat it too—denying that there was any purpose to the universe, and yet sort of whistling in the dark, saying you can have your subjective purposes at the same time.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, and there was an exchange on the emotional argument that they accused you and your side of making.

Dr. Craig: Right, that was one of Richard Dawkins' points, was that even though we had at least listed ten arguments for theism, Dawkins got up and said, “Well, all they're saying is ' just believe because it will make you feel good, just emotions.'” And I said in response that I think what he said is true of the atheist side, that in fact the atheists don't have any good arguments for their position, but it's all based just on emotions—an emotional revulsion at the idea of God and religion, and therefore they choose to believe that he doesn’t exist. And I'm deeply persuaded that atheism is ultimately rooted in this kind of emotional revulsion with God, rather than in reasoned argument and evidence, despite the intellectual posturing that atheists give.

Kevin Harris: Well, that tends to come through sometimes.

Dr. Craig: One of the other interesting emotional moments in the debate, though, Kevin, took place during the Q and A afterwards. Professor Wermer gave other conference speakers a chance to respond to the debate. And several people got up and said the universe has no purpose but we can create purpose in our lives. And then one of the speakers named Sean Stephenson spoke up. Now, Sean Stephenson is a remarkable man. He is terribly physically deformed—he is about the size of a beach ball, Kevin, he is so stunted, and small legs and arms and very, very deformed. And yet he has met this challenge with grace and poise and is earning a doctorate right now. And he was in his little wheelchair there in the audience, and they brought the microphone to him, and he said, “I find it remarkable that so many people here would think that we human beings can have a purpose for our lives, but that this grand universe in which we live can have no purpose for its existence. How arrogant to think that we would be able to create purpose for our lives, but that this universe in all its beauty and grandeur would be devoid of purpose. How can we say such a thing?” And I think that emotional moment had more impact on people than much of the debate did. It was really quite a kind of turning point where you just felt the emotions of the audience change at that moment—coming especially from someone like Sean Stephenson.

Kevin Harris: This is such a huge topic that City of Ideas had you speak on. And I think that this is going to get louder. And it occurs to me, Bill, that people – atheists in particular and secularists – are going to have to go beyond whistling past the graveyard, and they're going to have to start having a whole orchestra pass the graveyard because it comes down to finding ways to distract yourself from the impending doom.

Dr. Craig: [laughter] Isn't that right, Kevin? That's right.

Kevin Harris: What frightens me is that there are so many technological distractions today—you can play video games until you're croak. There's so many distractions today.

Dr. Craig: Oh, Kevin, I'll tell you, that reminds me of one of the things that also was shared in the conference. Michio Kaku gave a talk about the future and how we will have the internet built into glasses that we will wear, which will send a beam directly into our retina so that we will perceive virtual reality as though it were real around us. And he said eventually the internet will be embedded in contact lenses that we will wear, which will enable us to inhabit this virtual reality. And so he said, you don't have a date for Saturday night? No problem. You just conjure up the most beautiful virtual woman that you could possibly image, and then you download a movie, and, say you want to watch Casablanca, well you put her face in the place of Ingrid Bergman and your face in the place of Humphrey Bogart, [4] and you can watch yourselves in this movie together, and enjoy this Saturday night date with her. And I thought, how pathetic, this kid alone in his room, living in this virtual reality and this fantasy world, it's like you said, distracting ourselves to death, pretending not to notice the way reality really is. It was pathetic and frightening to me to hear that vision of the future.

Kevin Harris: It is pathetic because distractions are so temporary, and even having that kind of technology to help you into a virtual world on a boring Friday night are going to be vacuous eventually and empty, and you'll only need more and more and more, and that is frightening. And distractions keep us from God, Bill.

Dr. Craig: Yes.

Kevin Harris: I mean, T.V., radio, internet, all these things are good, but we can just distract ourselves to oblivion.

Dr. Craig: You don't have to address the deep spiritual questions if you just keep yourself sufficiently entertained.

Kevin Harris: There were three topics that came up at City of Ideas, and in our next podcast I want to talk about three areas that were prominent at City of Ideas—that's on the next podcast with Dr. William Lane Craig on Reasonable Faith. [5]