Dawkins vs Williams 2013

BizzyC

Just ran into this story on BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-21220007

Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams are to discuss the role of religion at a Cambridge Union debate.

Prominent atheist Prof Dawkins and the former Archbishop of Canterbury will discuss whether "religion has no place in the 21st Century" on Thursday.

They were involved in a public discussion at Oxford University last year.

Ben Kentish, president of the union, said it should be a highlight of the debating society's 200-year history.

"Our speakers are the most renowned commentators on this subject," he said.

In Cambridge, about 1,000 students will be in the audience.

"The prospect of seeing Professor Dawkins and the former Archbishop of Canterbury debate the subject is particularly exciting for our members," Mr Kentish said.

"It has all the makings of an excellent debate."

Professor Tariq Ramadan, Andrew Copson, the chief executive of the British Humanist Association, and Douglas Murray, founder of the Centre for Social Cohesion, will also take part.

The debate will be filmed and made available soon after on the union's website.

Previous speakers at the debating society include Sir Winston Churchill, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

Will be very interested to see how this turns out.

No doubts supporters on both sides will be declaring a "winner" afterwards, but I'd love to see a proper debate on this.

D1stant

How do you judge a winner in these things?



Unless you get 'em to fight;)

Just Like Heaven

Williams always seemed level-headed in interviews so it'll be make a change at least from extreme creationism vs. evolution debates.

SebBerkovich

I'd quite like to see a fairly rational man like Williams take on Dawkins and attempt to respond better than the usual "It's my faith so logic can't defeat me!" school of debate.

Akrasia

I'll watch it on youtube afterwards, but I predict that the debate will just be Williams ceeding all points of science to Dawkins declaring that 'there is no conflict between science and religion) and retreating to arguments for morality and the 'there can be no objective morality without God' position.

Williams will defend 'god' but will not make any real attempt to defend the christian version of God, instead preferring to argue that some kind of Deist force is either possible or essential, and then just declaring that this force must be the christian god on the basis of that god 'revealing itself to him'

Dawkins will give the usual arguments that the bible is not the basis for any moral code as the morals in the bible are outdated and horrific in many places, and Williams will ignore this point and go on a tangent defining morality in such a way that it requires a God or else we can not define anything as truly good or evil.

kiffer

So... post 19 then?

Peregrinus

You can podcast their Oxford iscussion from last year - it's actually pretty good, mainly because neither of them is trying to "win".

Calibos

Akrasia wrote: »

I'll watch it on youtube afterwards, but I predict that the debate will just be Williams ceeding all points of science to Dawkins declaring that 'there is no conflict between science and religion) and retreating to arguments for morality and the 'there can be no objective morality without God' position.

Williams will defend 'god' but will not make any real attempt to defend the christian version of God, instead preferring to argue that some kind of Deist force is either possible or essential, and then just declaring that this force must be the christian god on the basis of that god 'revealing itself to him'

Dawkins will give the usual arguments that the bible is not the basis for any moral code as the morals in the bible are outdated and horrific in many places, and Williams will ignore this point and go on a tangent defining morality in such a way that it requires a God or else we can not define anything as truly good or evil.

He discussed this with the current Vatican astronomer (American Jesuit??) in one of his TV programmes. Every point was pretty much conceded and ultimately the old reliable ,"Well I just have faith" was trotted out.

Thats what shocks me so much about any debate. The quality of arguement doesn't get that much better or rational or logical even going from a redneck to a Vatican Astronomer, Human Genome decoder, Pope or Ex British PM. Its simply the diction, grammer, verbosity that improves.

Peregrinus

Calibos wrote: »

He discussed this with the current Vatican astronomer (American Jesuit??) in one of his TV programmes. Every point was pretty much conceded and ultimately the old reliable ,"Well I just have faith" was trotted out.

Mmm. But in Dawkins’s programme, Dawkins sets the agenda and the context, selects the guests and the questions and the topics, and even controls (if he cares to) the editing. Did Dawkins, for example, devote much time to exploring why the guy had the faith he did, given that his scientific position was pretty well indistinguishable from Dawkins’s? No? So how much do you, the viewer, really end up understanding that you didn’t understand before?

IMO, the reason the Dawkins-Williams discussion at Oxford worked quite well last year is because it wasn’t controlled either by Dawkins or by Williams, but by the moderator, Anthony Kenny, who’s neither a scientist nor a theologian, but a philosopher (and identifies neither as a theist nor as an atheist, but as an agnostic). He framed the questions (apart from a few from the audience at the end) and chose topics on which both had plenty to say, and he gave them the space to say it, while keeping them more or less addressing the same topics. It worked well.

I don’t see the Cambridge Union debate working quite so well, to be honest. There’ll be five guest speakers, not two, plus presumably a number of student speakers, and none of them will have any notion of what the others are going to say beforehand. Since the likelihood of any productive dialogue with this format is slim, the principal guest will simply use the opportunity to restate their views on the set topic (which is the contemporary social relevance of religion) or on some question vaguely connected with the topic, but about which they have strong feelings. There’s no meaningful sense in which anyone can “win” a debate structured in this way, other than by being the more entertaining speaker.

Akrasia

While it may not necessarily be possible to outright win a debate in this format, it is certainly possible to lose one.

While the true believers on either side will probably declare their own side the victor regardless of the content of the debate, there will be people in the middle who are unsure of their own beliefs who can be turned off by one side or another.

To those who are still searching and trying to make sense of the arguments for or against religion, they want confidence, but confidence can be very easily interpreted as arrogance.

The debate last year between Dawkins and Cardinal Pell in Australia was a good example of how things can go wrong. Pell came across as arrogant and smarmy when he took a mocking stance against Dawkins but this would only have been apparant if you knew the underlying science which was on Dawkins' side. To those who are not informed on the theory of evolution or the cosmology of a universe from nothing, Cardinal Pell was Legitimately pointing out a seemingly ludicrous position, that Dawkins was arguing about the definition of 'Nothing'.

To those who are aware that the concept of Nothingness in science is actually quite a complex proposition which is not yet fully understood, Pell came across as an ass, to others, Dawkins came across as a fool.

keane2097

Peregrinus wrote: »

You can podcast their Oxford iscussion from last year - it's actually pretty good, mainly because neither of them is trying to "win".

link?

Peregrinus

Oh, yes, sorry. You'll find it here.

http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/richard-dawkins

I think you can probably find it on iTunes as well.

The Mad Hatter

Peregrinus wrote: »

Mmm. But in Dawkins’s programme, Dawkins sets the agenda and the context, selects the guests and the questions and the topics, and even controls (if he cares to) the editing. Did Dawkins, for example, devote much time to exploring why the guy had the faith he did, given that his scientific position was pretty well indistinguishable from Dawkins’s? No? So how much do you, the viewer, really end up understanding that you didn’t understand before?

For the record, Dawkins releases uncut tapes of his interviews onto his website via YouTube, so if there's any concern about dishonest editing, that can be easily checked. The full interview with George Coyne, the Vatican Astronomer, can be watched here.

legspin

Every time I see the thread title I think I am in the motorsport forum.

Dades

Peregrinus wrote: »

Oh, yes, sorry. You'll find it here.

http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/richard-dawkins

I think you can probably find it on iTunes as well.

You are correct!

The link is here.

Dades

I listened to this yesterday.

I like Rowan Williams and have a lot to time for him, and I've no doubt he's a more intelligent man than me. But I could not believe the sheer vacuousness of his replies in this debate.

He comes across as a kindly old scholar (albeit with a hint of Saruman), but when he talks in this debate, he manages to say absolutely nothing of any substance. Time and time again I was baffled by the utter dearth of a material contribution to the subject at hand.

Obviously, I wasn't expecting him to come up with any profound words that would make me rethink my worldview but I really expected more than the soft-spoken philosophical nothingness he produced.

Am I being harsh here?

robindch

Dades wrote: »

[...] he manages to say absolutely nothing of any substance [...]

You've been hanging around here too long

Brian Shanahan

Dades wrote: »

I like Rowan Williams and have a lot to time for him, and I've no doubt he's a more intelligent man than me. But I could not believe the sheer vacuousness of his replies in this debate.

I never thought Rev. Beardie to be an intelligent man. He was part of TB's continuation of Maggie's policy of appointing well spoken non-entities to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, after her vicious run-in with Archbishop Runcie and his "faith in the city" document (which was a strong attempt to combine socialism and christianity). Everything I've ever read, seen or heard of him has been vague and vacuous. You couldn't even go so far as to call it "a tale told by a fool" because there is no fury in his speeches, just a bland form of smug or regret (depending on what message he is conveying).