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Theologian Attempts Censorship After Losing Public Debate
RockDoctor writes "Theologian John Haught publicly debated prominent evolutionary scientist and atheist Jerry Coyne at the University of Kentucky back in October. Before the debate, both parties agreed to the debate being video-taped. Coyne is of the opinion that he convincingly won the debate over Haught. But we'll never know, because Haught, with the assistance of staff at the University of Kentucky, who sponsored the debate, is banning publication of the video of the event. They are even refusing to release the half of the debate containing Coyne's comments and questions."
I propose cruxifiction.
'Nuff said.
... wait a second, let me read the wikipedia article on this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Haught#cite_note-Haught-Coyne-7
- Is an evolutionary creationist
- Testified against ID in a court case
What exactly were these guys debating about?
p.s. anyone have a real source on this article?
From the update to TFA:
So not only is the guy refusing to release the record, but he's now threatening legal action because people are calling him names and being mean.
When your in a hole, rule #1 - stop digging.
The point of public debate is to sway those (perhaps few) in the audience who are undecided on the matter being debated; to inform in a dramatic manner; and to raise the profile of an issue that the debaters and venue consider important.
I think I speak for many /.ers when I say... "Oh Jesus". Honestly, if you attempt to justify religion on anything resembling logic you lose. Speaking of "faith" at least gets you out of the logic trap, assuming the person you're speaking to accepts faith as a viable substitute for logic - and of course atheists do not.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
The Comfy Chair!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"A truly scientific worldview would lead to opinions such as: we don't know, there is no proof one way or the other." ...therefore, till new proofs appear, we'll stick to the simplest explanation, the one without the imaginary friend, that is.
Occam's razor, they call it.
A "literal interpretation of Genesis" tells the reader that God lied to Adam and Eve; punished them for disobedience; and then chose to throw them out because their disobedience had made them more like God, so they had to be prevented from living forever and becoming even more like God.
(Chapters 2 and 3, if you want to cross-check that for yourself.)
You really sure you want Genesis to be literally interpretable? Because it makes your God out to be evil, selfish and kinda insecure.
There is evidence to support the idea that Paul invented the idea that 100% of all Humans go to Hell with the exception of those saved by Jesus as a way of breaking the original covenant with Abraham the Jews had. The idea is that Adam brought Sin into the world, and at that point all Humans were damned to Hell. Jews of Paul's time were rejecting Christianity, while the surrounding "Pagans" were adopting it. The Jews were a disliked class, so this little poison pill was a way of condemning the Jews.
This also explains why there are Christian Creationists. For Christianity to be true, and the Jesus Crucifixion to have had any purpose, that particular story is the most important story after the story of Jesus. Without Creationism, Christianity collapses entirely because Yahweh has no original sin with Which to condemn us all to Hell from the start.
Paul provided Christianity with the rope to hang itself. Because he created the clause in the Bible that requires the initial original sin of Adam to take place for any of this to mean anything. The Original sin of Adam is the PRIMARY reason for the Crucifixion in Jesus, ordinary Human failings are SECONDARY.
I understand what Paul was trying to do, he was looking for a way to make the laws of the Torah invalid for salvation. He wanted to be able to go to the Jews of his time, and say "Yahweh doesn't care if you follow the laws of Moses any longer. You were bad followers so he no longer wants you because you have the audacity to reject the sacrifice of the savior. So, see you in Hell."
We know the world is not 6000 years old, we know that the Genesis myths were allegory because those desert nomads didn't know how the world began, Paul hedged the entire religion on the foundation of that myth.
So in conclusion, Christianity is the cult of Paul. This only applies to Christianity. But it is the critical fault in Christianity that disproves it. Thats why creationists cling tp the creation myth more than any other myth in the Bible. It's the corner stone that collapses the whole religion.
See, here's the problem with that. The ideas of god or no god, santa or no santa, unicorns or no unicorns is not some 50/50 odds thing. There is literally zero evidence of any of them. So on the one hand, we have an emerging scientific worldview that does a very good job of either accounting for things as they are, or tearing itself apart in very short order such that it can find a new explanation that fits the data, and on the other, we have a fairy story that fits no data at all.
Giving the truth/myth sides equal weight on these subjects, which are all identical in nature, is ludicrous, either the act of the deluded or the deceiver. When you have evidence for any of them, bring it forth, and that'd be of huge interest. Until then, it's just fairy stories, no matter how many people believe them.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They're using this 'ban' for people to become curious and demand to see the video. And both he and Coyne will have lots of money.
Wow, you sound like the open minded leading scientists who rejected the big bang theory back in the day because it was developed by a priest and "smelled of creationism".
As demonstrated by the priest referred to above, the religious may also use facts, proof and logic. They just don't do so on religious matters, there they have articles of faith. Of course some atheists seem to have articles of faith themselves, their faith is merely of the opposite polarity. When true scientists are asked about God the answer tends to be: I don't know, there is no evidence one way or the other.
Ah, but you're all just ACs. Just trolling, I guess, rather than interested in learning any new truths. For everyone else reading this, I thought I'd include a standard rejoinder about the nature of scientific 'proof', just in case.
When one does not have proof, one need not avoid any conclusions; evidence is sufficient. Most of the evidence suggests that there is no imaginary friend; all of the evidence otherwise is provided by anecdote, fallacy, fraud, or fiction. There is evidence that his friend is imaginary, in one sense of the word. There are indicators in the brain that are associated with religious activity; literally faith is all in your head.
I'll believe in god when there is more evidence in favor of its existence than there is against it. I won't do it because some random clown on the the street with a bullhorn (or on the Internet) yells about it. That isn't evidence. You believe; too bad for you. If I knew more about you, I might even be able to explain why you believe (probably because you were raised with the notion of god as a child, but perhaps not). But your belief is not evidence.
See? An open mind that evaluates evidence and comes to a conclusion using the best data available. That's how you have to deal with the scientific worldview.
Sounds like he succeeded. Didn't publish a video is not merely an 'attempt'. Now then... you can call it an 'attempt' as soon as we see the content available despite their efforts.
Actually it sounds like the University itself is responsible for the censorship... specifically Mr. Rabel, and I would say based on the article... it sounds like the uni is a biased venue that would choose to publish or not publish based on who won. Shame shame.
The participant decided he didn't want it published after the fact, but since he had already granted his permission, the ball rests totally in the uni's court....
Any 6 year old can tell you there is more proof of Santa. When they ask Santa for something there's a good chance they will get it. When they pray for something there is little chance.
To be fair, Haught is not a creationist. As for how creationists can win debates, you have to remember that debates don't decide the truth. They decide who the better debater is. A commonly used creationist tactic is called the "Gish Gallop" named after the young-earth creationist Duane Gish. Basically the person using this dishonest debating tactic spews as much bullshit as they possibly can in the time allotted. Their opponent loses the argument by wading into the bullshit and attempting to correct the record. It's much easier to spew bullshit than it is to show how it is wrong, and the creationist ignores anything the scientist refutes and simply vomits forth another load of bullshit. The end result is the creationist gets to claim that the scientist hasn't managed to refute the bulk of the bullshit, and so the creationist wins. It's pretty effective, especially when used in conjunction with other tricks like picking the turf (churches and bible colleges), picking the moderator or at least making sure they're not a scientist, changing the topic of the debate immediately before the debate is to begin, busing in supporters, and above all else making the debate one where the creationist gets to go on the offensive without ever having to present, or much less defend, their views. Creationists tend to come from theology or legal backgrounds, areas where rhetoric and debating skills are central. Scientists are pretty much untrained in debate and rhetoric because for us it's all about the evidence. However if one were to hold a written debate where arguments can be read at leisure and picked apart at leisure, the creationists can only win if the pro-science side doesn't do their homework. Which is why you don't see creationists engaging in written debates past what you see on web forms and the like, and why they're pretty one-sided.
You are pretty uninformed regarding Christianity. Christianity has a wide range of opinions and only a very small minority are of the earth is 6,000 years old persuasion. Many are quite comfortable with the idea that the universe and earth are billions of years old. As a matter of fact a priest from one of these larger groups introduced the big bang theory to the world of science. They also quite comfortable that the bible often speaks in metaphors that are not to be taken literally, that an all knowing God can only communicate to man using concepts that man is capable of understanding.
Occam's razor is concerned with the simplest explanation in the sense of making the least number of assumptions. Introducing God in to an argument tends to require a great number of unevidenced assumptions. A man getting struck by lightning twice in a year is normally quite unlikely. A naturalistic explanation may appear complicated by comparison to invoking the wrath of an angry god, but the latter requires far more assumptions.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
It's not simpler because now you have to explain:
Who is god?
Why did he make the world?
Why 7 days?
What made god?
That last one is important, because whatever your answer just was, could probably be applied to the original question.
Life is too short to proofread.
You talk of proof. If you tell me something insane (my imaginary friend created the universe), the burden is absolutely NOT upon ME to prove it correct. That's on YOU. Otherwise, YOU are the one who is insane. Not me.
Playing devil's advocate for a minute:
If you tell me something insane (the universe popped into being all by its self and life evolved through no external design), the burden is absolutely NOT upon ME to prove it correct. That's on YOU. Otherwise, YOU are the one who is insane. Not me.
Note: I'm actually an agnostic, but I can easily see how someone who has faith in a god can use *exactly* the same argument as someone who has faith in there being no god.
As an agnostic, I don't really have any faith either way. But to me, the existence of a god doesn't actually answer any meaningful questions (i.e. if we decide that intelligence couldn't possibly come about without design then how did the designer come into existence? It just pushes all the questions back a level). Also, by definition, there can be no evidence either for the existence or nonexistence. So since the whole thing is a fundamentally unprovable question that doesn't meaningfully answer any questions, I don't really worry about it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
So God is the original troll? Given how the universe feels, your explanation makes me MORE inclined to believe in God.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
That somehow one party legitimately won a debate of factual, unemotive series of arguments, over his opponent, is a pretty big assumption here. There's many other reasons why the poor fool may have decided to censor it - blatant ad hominem attacks that would get the guy in trouble with friends / family / job being the first that comes to my mind. (And no, you don't have to be 'guilty' for such attacks to work)
Seriously, when was the last time you watched a debate, and it was a civil exchange of factual, unemotive, sincere argumentation? Richard Dawkins, for instance, who is by now a champion of atheism, and has absolutely no need to do so, *still* resorts almost continuously to ad hominem attacks in his debates; the man does his homework (and rather seems to enjoy it, in fact). And I'd expect most people in debates with a known opponent would too, since the point of a debate is usually 'to *win' the debate, and not to obtain a mutually improved selection of arguments, (where no winner exists as such).
In fact, I'd say the fact that the slashdot response to this has been so stereotypical -- a witchhunt, and very quick to label this guy as a religious nut with dangerous delusions and now a sore loser --, rather justifies his decision, even at the risk of a Streisand Effect (which his opponent was very quick to pursue).
Um, this thing you call "belief"? Science doesn't use it.
Of course it does. There are frequently no absolute answers (especially at the leading edge of science) and scientists base their work on what they believe to be true. Occasionally, someone comes up with a new hypothesis and gets hell from the other scientists for their crazy theories. Sometimes those crazy ideas are shown to work better than the established theories and everyone has to shift their belief. Scientific belief is a lot more fluid than religious belief, but don't kid yourself - it is a fundamental part of science and there is always a lot of resistance to changing it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
If he'd just let this public debate be viewed by the public, we wouldn't have to assume anything. We could make our own conclusions. If he's going to great lengths to hide it, we're going to assume the worst. It's a pretty big leap of logic to assume that everything was all unicorns and flowerbeds when he's flipping out about it like he is.
Simpler than that is that God created us both just before you posted that, memories in place.
Simpler that *that* God created just me, and you don't even count, 10 seconds ago . . .
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Richard Dawkins, for instance, who is by now a champion of atheism, and has absolutely no need to do so, *still* resorts almost continuously to ad hominem attacks in his debates; the man does his homework
If the opponent is basing their argument on their own self, like saying "god spoke to me" or "I know this is true" (ie trust me) or using the respect of their office then it isn't ad hominem to attack their person -- they opened the door by using themselves as their argument. Unfortunately there aren't very many compelling arguments for religion that don't boil down to 'trust me' or 'god spoke to me', but it isn't Dawkin at fault.
"And what is a day before god made the Earth?"
Obviously a holiday since he didn't do shit that day.
In fact there's a bit of an obsession out in Atheist-land at beating one guy: William Lane Craig, who is considered technically by many to be the top Christian debater... and arguably has never "lost" (sorry I really have to put that last word in quotes), as the linked Atheist site describes, despite going up against some serious popular intellectual heavyweights such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Famously, Dawkins recently backed out of a debate with him.
It's worth noting here, for anyone interested, this blog which does a pretty nice job of reviewing and rating many of these debates from an Agnostic perspective.
These debates generally are not specifically on evolution, but virtually all of them include it to greater and lesser degrees.
"God made the world in 7 days" sounds far simpler than anything science has come up with.
Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation that fits all known facts is the one most likely to be correct.
........
All those niggly details about things like fossils and evolution and stuff can be soooooo inconvenient
No, the scientific answer is to definitely not assume the existence of a creator.
You're confusing "scientific" with "ontologically consistent". It is not scientific to posit any entity which is neither observed directly nor necessary to explain observed behaviour, and it is not unscientific to posit that such an entity does not exist on the basis of parsimony.
It's perfectly scientific to say there is not a mirror universe Earth which is totally inaccessible from our Earth which is currently the exact same as here except that Obama has a goatee, even though there is no evidence and there cannot be any evidence. Don't get caught up in the fact that the statement appears absolute. Consider a case where there can eventually be evidence: it's also possible that the first monkey given a typewriter after 2127 will produce the complete works of Shakespeare on that typewriter, but it's perfectly scientific to say that monkey will not, even though you can say that technically this is possible and you can argue that we won't really know until 2127 at the earliest.
Likewise, there could be a creator, but until you come up with any evidence then no is a valid scientific answer. "Maybe" is also somewhat valid, but only in an extremely unuseful sense, like "maybe Stonehenge was build by leprechauns, which left the world 300 years ago and erased all evidence of their existence save for their legends and stonehenge" or "maybe the universe was created last tuesday with our memories intact" or "maybe the entirety of modern history was an extreme random anomaly that appeared consistent by sheer chance, and we'll start getting more probable results now, basically resetting modern physics to square 1 (if we don't abandon it entirely)". The scientific answer to those is, no, that didn't happen, until and unless you give a good reason for these hypotheses.
I also don't give a shit whether somebody believes so long as they don't hurt anybody else, and I'm not going to try to "convert" them to atheism or anything, but you cannot usefully claim that science is neutral here. If somebody believes in god, fine. You don't have to go and drag science into it and try to claim that the belief is scientifically valid. Everybody is wrong about some things, so if you disagree, leave it at that. Science doesn't have a lot to do with why you believe a lot of other things either, eg. which book you believe is most entertaining (well, unless it's a science textbook...).
Honestly, you're pushing agnosticism pretty hard here, which seems a little contrary to your thing about pushing beliefs on other people.
Ontologically, I would agree that *any* reasonable person is strictly agnostic in the semi-useless sense that we're talking about. It's pretty much my definition of a reasonable, non-fundamentalist person, whether theist or atheist. That doesn't mean they haven't also taken a position, theist or atheist, and I that very few people truly, truly have not to at least some extent. And that doesn't mean it's scientific to entertain the positive and negative notions equally.
Richard Dawkins, for instance, who is by now a champion of atheism, and has absolutely no need to do so, *still* resorts almost continuously to ad hominem attacks in his debates
Each time I see one of these debates he seems to have extraordinary amounts of patience with his opponents. What are you referring to, really? Or do mean something like calling someone deluded when they claim that god spoke to them? That seems fair - even if you share their belief you'd have to acknowledge that this can only be viewed as a delusion by someone who doesn't.
> Weird, I see imaginary friend as the simpler explanation
Not the same definition of "simpler". When discussing Occam's razor, "simpler" means "less things involved."
For instance, sun rises, could be due to motion of the Earth, could be due to the rotation of the Earth due to a guy who throws thunderbolts and lives on a mountain in Greece.
Occam's razor notes that the second of these two includes an extra factor that is not needed, and therefore is more likely to be wrong. Not wrong, but more likely. In the real world, "more likely" is a number very close to 100%
Speak for yourself.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What made god?
The typical response is that God is eternal, but if you are willing to believe that then why not simply believe that the universe itself is eternal?
You only have to look at the world to see how ridiculous the Christian notion of God is. Imagine you were a student living on campus. Your room is cold and damp, the heating is broken, the mattress has springs poking out, mud comes out the taps, there are large cracks in the windows. You ask faculty staff if the landlord can do something about it, and they tell you "Yes, he is well aware of the situation and could fix everything with the wave of a hand. And most of all he loves you, he wants you to have a good life. Thing is he doesn't get involved directly, you have to fix everything yourself. If you keep texting him he might offer some words of encouragement, but you still have to do all the work."
You sigh and spend months cleaning, fixing and tidying the place, making it liveable and saving yourself from hypothermia. Just as you are re-painting the last damp stained corner the faculty staff member turns up again and says "Wow, you must be thankful that the landlord provided all this stuff and helped you with all this work by sending ambiguously worded emails to us. You didn't get cc'ed in? Well, take our word for it, none of this would have been possible without his support. Don't forget to thank him if you don't want to spend your post-student life flipping burgers for eternity."
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's still all how you turn a phrase. You can make dogma sound like a bid for world domination easily by simply importing motives to that dogma that may or may not exist.
For instance, the Catholic church is not too fond of gays or at least, not too fond of practicing homosexuality. Is this because the hierarchy hates gays or is it because there's a few Bible quotes that say that being gay is bad? I'd say that it is because of the Bible quotes. Even if the people in the Church all really liked gay people, if God says that you aren't really supposed to approve, and you accept God as well... God, then you pretty much have no choice. On the other hand, there are other quotes which describe God as someone who doesn't like homosexuality, but he's pretty fond of sinners as people. So I am sure there are Catholics who hate gays, but does that make Catholicism bad or are those people bad Catholics?
The problem that arises when people who are very skeptical about religion evaluate dogma is that they tend to assign the same thought processes to the believers as they do to themselves. They see all the possible ways that dogma could be used to reinforce power structures or oppress undesirable groups, and of course, they're absolutely right, they can be and have been used for that. That doesn't mean that even a large minority of the clergy thinks that way. And even if ALL of the clergy AND the believers think that way, it doesn't prove or disprove the existence of God or even the correctness of any of the propositions laid down. It just means that everyone is a hypocrite.
I agree with many posters on one thing: the debates are worthless. The existence of God or any omnipotent, omniscient entity can't be proven or disproven by science. You can't use logic to logically disprove the entity that sets the axioms. There is no puff of smoke (sorry Douglas). Sure, you can say that Pope Fred said that heliocentric theory is wrong or and prove that he was wrong instead, but all that proves is that Pope Fred is wrong. If you are trying to use those arguments to sway public opinion, you'll certainly make some converts, but ultimately you are attacking the believers and not the proposition. At best, you are making a case for a serious reform of the Catholic Church, at worst, you are being hypocritical yourself.
In other words, in the current mindset with current attitudes, God as outlined by dogma may seem like a gigantic asshole. Anyone who makes that case convincingly in a debate is probably going to seem to win. Anyone who makes belief seem ridiculous will also win rhetorically (ie. "imaginary friend", "flying spaghetti monster", etc.). But none of that actually proves the truth of the assertion.
Even Jesus is quoted as telling his followers not to fight with non-believers. There are numerous scriptures that basically tell believers to abstain from defending God because God is more than capable of defending himself if He so chooses. Whenever I hear about a Christian trying to prove the Bible or God's existence I know immediately they are simply using the Bible as a weapon to force their ideals on others instead of a guidebook on how they should live. When that fails they quickly fall back to secular (non-religious) means to meet their goal. If he was really interested in proving God's existence he would try to act more like Him.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Even Jesus is quoted as telling his followers not to fight with non-believers. There are numerous scriptures that basically tell believers to abstain from defending God because God is more than capable of defending himself if He so chooses. Whenever I hear about a Christian trying to prove the Bible or God's existence I know immediately they are simply using the Bible as a weapon to force their ideals on others instead of a guidebook on how they should live. When that fails they quickly fall back to secular (non-religious) means to meet their goal. If he was really interested in proving God's existence he would try to act more like Him.
Mistake: You did not capitalize the word "himself" when referring to God.
Punishment: Eternal damnation.
God's Grammar Police.
Slashdot never disappoints: Apparently noone here has, nor intends to read the article.
If you did, you would see that (as one might have expected) there was more to the story than Coyne gave. You can read Haught's response here. Additionally, he has posted the video, after recieving some apparently quite nasty emails (way to show them how reasonable athiesm is, by personally attacking people with hatemail!)
The issues seemed to be as follows:
Haught didn’t seem to have prepared for the debate, merely rolling out his tired old trope .... I prepared pretty thoroughly, reading half a dozen of Haught’s books
-- It was because (if Haught is correct) that the format WAS to present what your views were.
Personally, having read Coyne's initial post, he comes off as rather unpleasant-- despite no agreement in place, and no reasonable cause to think the video would be posted or recorded for anything other than archival purposes, he refuses to take no for an answer and stirs up his readers to send hatemail to two professors at a university. He continues to pester them for quite some time, and doesnt even mention on the initial post that the video is being released-- its a separate blog entry, but is easily missed if you arent browsing his entries, and means that people will likely continue attacking Haught because they do not realize that the "issue" is over. He also comes off as quite "humble", declaring himself the victor, and saying "if I were in his situation, _I_ wouldnt have acted badly".
And then what is slashdot's response? To take Coyne at his word and declare him the victor-- despite noone having seen the video. Claiming that censorship is being attempted-- despite no agreement to post the video. Claiming the video isnt being released-- even though it has since been OK'd. Its almost like the editors WANT to stir up a flamewar for no reason.
Well, at least I know that Slashdot will stay classy, read the articles, and make relevant comments, rather than mindlessly bashing how stupid and ignorant Haught must be. Way to keep that standard high.
Disclaimer-- I probably disagree with about 80% of what Haught believes.
The videos have been released.
http://vimeo.com/31505142