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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."
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.
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.
Dig up, stupid!
Wrong website dude.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As I noted on the web site, this is likely actionable by Coyne.
He expended time and effort to prepare for and engage in the debate with a justified expectation of having the video posted. An agreement, with consideration given. Sounds actionable to me. Haught should be made to deliver on the agreement, or give compensation.
"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.
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
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.