Summations Only

Dawkins spends all his time on the previous issue, but at least the moderator imdicates that Dawkins rejects the miracle stories and provides two quotes from the book. First, that there is little historical evidence that Jesus ever claimed to be God and second that Jesus was a Jew and not interested in taking his message to the gentiles.Lennox responds by complaining that the Gospels are no longer accepted as reliable. He quotes the historian Sherwin-White on Luke. The footnotes tells us that this is from: It appears that this is something of a quote mine. First there’s no context and it could well refer to just “Roman Society and Roman Law”. A little more digging found a review where the review complained (!) that Sherwin-White thought that Jesus was not born during the census of Quirinius as the Gospel claims. So we cannot take it as much of an endorsement of Luke’s account of Jesus.Lennox also raises the parable of the Good Samaritan. Which really doesn’t address the point - and if it did the Samaritans are very much a special case. The story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7) seems more relevant and certainly indicates that Jesus put the Jews first.On miracles Lennox attacks Hume, seemingly without understanding and asserts that the laws of nature are only God’s usual way of doing things and therefore if God does things differently - a miracle - it doesn’t break them. That seems a semantic game to me.He tries to support it by citing C S Lewis: How this is meant to help his case I don’t know, Lewis clearly prefers a natural explanation over a supernatural one, and it could even be read as suggesting that apparent miracles are fraudulent.Again Lennox sabotages himself. His case for the reliability of the Gospels would be an argument from authority at best, and the age of his source would count against him there - as does the fact that it only covers Luke and Acts. But since it appears to be something of a misrepresentation I can’t give it to him.He doesn’t make any case for Jesus intending that gentiles should be brought into the church or a good defence for miracles. Indeed the Lewis reference seems to be another case of shooting himself in the foot.So, I count this a marginal win for Dawkins.That’s the last entry, but we have the concluding statements to go.

Lennox goes first.He tries to argue by analogy that the universe is like a garden and so must have a gardener. Well, it’s a point of view but it’s very much subjective. Then he makes another mistake of railing against an atheistic universe. He especially dislikes the idea that people can escape justice by dying. That’s really a gift to Dawkins. He finishes by claiming that he’s convinced by the Resurrection. It’s strange then that he didn’t introduce that in the preceding segment - it would have fit perfectly. I doubt he could have made a good case in the time allotted but that consideration obviously didn’t stop him earlier and it couldn’t be much worse than the material he did use.Dawkins accepts the gift and really nails Lennox on that point. He also points out that evolution really does explain a lot of what we see with no need for a “gardener”.My own conclusion.Dawkins did not argue well, but Lennox managed to do worse. Counting the concluding statements only two sections had clear victories and Dawkins won both. But only because Lennox gave him the wins - by failing to address Dawkins’ arguments in the first case, and by setting himself up in the concluding remarks.This is not an important debate for the argument.With regard to Robert Leva’s points I note that nobody has expressed high regard for Dawkins’ arguments. This is not an impressive debate and neither side was utterly defeated - at least judged on this basis. Maybe the presentation did make a difference.I will also note that Dawkins did address the fine tuning that Lennox brought up - and it was Lennox who failed to rebut Dawkins’ arguments. And the debate format did nothing to hinder Lennox in that regard.There are many points which could do with more detailed discussion and I know that there will be people here who disagree with my assessments. I invite anyone who’s interested to start a new thread to go into more depth on any point.

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I thought the Climate change thread was an okay discussion, you didn't?

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I thought that the lack of intelligent points from your side was a big issue.

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I understand that this forum is a gathering place for atheists with far left political views...

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I don’t think there is anybody from the far left here at all.

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These things equally go both ways, the religious attempts to introduce things into public school curriculums are often only an attempt to counteract militant atheists attempts to introduce their propaganda into school curriculums.

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That’s untrue. As you know. Some religious people want to get their propaganda into science lessons because they disagree with the science. Meanwhile other religious people are even writing the textbooks for the science courses.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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A big enough issue so that you think it was not an okay discussion? Would it have been better if my posts had been censored?

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It should be obvious that if the problem is a lack of intelligent posts from one side, the solution is for that side to provide intelligent posts. A good discussion requires worthwhile posts from both sides.

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Now, beginning only in the past few decades, and ramping up drastically in only the past few years, we're seeing an increasing hostility and intolerance towards conservative free speech.

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That’s really a consequence of the increasing hostility, intolerance and mendacity of Conservative speech. For instance confusing the right to speak with the right to be given a soapbox on other people’s property.

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For months now, Donald Trump has been banned from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Snapchat

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Because he was disseminating misinformation that lead to a coup attempt. They tried lesser remedies but even fact checks were attacked as restricting “free speech”. Ridiculous, but that’s where Conservatism is,

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This forum's longtime poster Faith, was permanently banned, not for breaking forum rules or vulgar language, but for having an opinion on something that administration deemed "dangerous".

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Again, for posting dangerous disinformation. And again this is a privately-owened forum. There is no “free speech” right to use it against the owner’s wishes,

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Yes I know, these kinds of obviously dishonest statements are another of the many reasons why there aren't a wider variety of posters here.

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There is nothing “dishonest” in telling the obvious truth, there aren’t any Marxists here, for instance. At least not as far as I know.

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They don't disagree with the science, they disagree with the atheism.

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So they are prepared to accept that the Earth is billions of years old, that there never was a global Flood and that evolution explains the diversity of life we see ? Those are all science, accepted by many Christians.

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Everyone is religious, atheists have been writing the textbooks for science courses for a long time, because atheism controls science.

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No, I’m not religious. And I specifically linked to a textbook with a Christian author.But thanks for demonstrating the problem again.

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Yet he cloaks it with "what Jesus said to do." And Jesus was far far from Marxism.

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I think you are confusing communism in a more general sense with Marxism in particular. Neither Ringo nor Jesus say much about the proletariat seizing the means of production!But the Disciples seem pretty communist to me - only a little while after Jesus’ death: (Acts 2, NRSV)

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Marxism is an outdated concept. (some of us think communism is also, seeing as how it failed after the Cold War. The only folks left who embraced it lived in nations too poor to ever embrace Capitalism.)

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Well, that is all varieties of Marxism, at least in name.

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As for Jesus and the Book of Acts, I see it as a story in the context of those times. No humans worth their salt would ever lay everything at the feet of Government.

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That’s hardly what anyone is telling you to do.

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Nor would they lay it at the feet of some televangelist

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Unfortunately too many people do send too much money to televangelists.

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Which begs the question as to Whom we are called to give it all up for and whose feet we should lay our stuff under.

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You’re practically begging jar to cite Matthew 25 at you - again.

I’ll create a new thread.