In the words of the Blue Flutterby, let's take a look at this, shall we?
Hitchens the Lesser wrote:This is a light-hearted diversion for the God-hating adherents to this site
Oh dear. Straight out of the gate and we're already into problems. To hate your cretinous magic man would require that I accept that he actually has some basis in reality. I do not.
(to whom I occasionally fling hunks of bleeding flesh, so that I can watch them come flapping from afar to feast on it).
Ah, yes, because we're all slaves to your every whim...
Maybe it will also be a rest from the tedium of responding (yet again) to the various lame and exploded ‘arguments’ of the drug lobby, for making their selfish habit even more legal than it already is. If just one of them ever paid any attention, or engaged seriously, it would make it seem worthwhile. But they never do. It’s all mechanical, destructive rhetoric they’ve got off the telly, or learned in PSHE classes.
Hahaha! So, we're to take the word of one whose understanding of drug use is entirely 'mechanical, destructive rhetoric he's got off the telly' over those who actually have experience in such matters, are we? Are you having a fucking giraffe?
Now, serious engagement was exactly what we got in the uplifting surroundings of Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre (named after Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon, since you ask, and one of the great buildings of Europe, superb inside and outside but perhaps most astonishing of all up in the mighty roof-beams that make it possible) in Oxford on Tuesday night. The Sheldonian is one of a group of buildings which in largely embody English history, as well as expressing the Royal grandeur of the restored Stuarts. They look pretty startling now, but set amid the small and muddy town that was Oxford at the end of the 17th century, they must have seemed almost impossibly majestic.
Something upon which we agree. Oxford is indeed a beautiful city. It almost seems a shame to besmirch it with the presence of one of the most truly odious little cunts on the planet, namely your pet liar for jeebus, the arch-fuckwit, Kalamity Kraig.
Next to it is Bodley’s Great Library, and beyond that Radcliffe Square dominated by The College of All Souls, a monument to the dead of the Hundred Years’ War, and the soaring church of St Mary the Virgin, scene of Thomas Cranmer’s great trial and renunciation of the Pope. Next to the Sheldonian is the Clarendon Building, once the headquarters of the University Press, and built thanks to the profits of the ‘History of the Great Rebellion’, the first great account of the English Civil War, written by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. Sheldon, a courageous Anglican who had to be ejected bodily from All Souls, by the Cromwellians, was a close ally of Clarendon, so it is fitting that buildings named after both of them stand next to each other. Three hundred yards away is the spot where Cranmer, (and before him Latimer and Ridley) were burned to death for their Protestant beliefs.
But I digress.
Indeed you do.
The American philosopher William Lane Craig had offered to debate Richard Dawkins’s book ‘The God Delusion’ with its author, in his home town (and mine) .
Slight problem there: Kraig is not a philosopher. A philosopher is, at the risk of committing the etymological fallacy, a lover of truth. Kraig isn't the least bit interested in what is actually true. He's only interested in supporting his puerile fucknuttery regarding the existence of some celestial peeping-tom. If he were interested in the truth, he wouldn't continually spout the same five previously debunked arguments that he presents every time he speaks. He certainly couches his bollocks in the philosowibble so beloved of the terminally credulous, but truth is not what he's after, as is clear from his repetition of the same tired fallacies time and again.
Dawkins is around, because he has his own event in another Oxford location on Friday. But despite being in the midst of promoting a new book, Dawkins refused to come. He came up with a series of silly excuses, none of which holds water.
What, you mean that Kraig, being a lying, weaselly little cunt, not being a worthy opponent of a leading academic doesn't hold water?
And an empty chair was provided for him at the Sheldonian on Tuesday evening, in case he changed his mind and – yes – to mock him for his absence.
Of course, because Kraig is a charlatan; a snake-oil salesman, and this kind of theatre is his stock in trade, in precisely the same manner that reality is not.
Details of this controversy are all over the web, and I was impressed by the behaviour of another Oxford atheist, Daniel Came, who said Dawkins should have turned up, and had the guts to be there himself .
Then Daniel should have 'Came' himself, and taken up the baton. Or did he not 'have the guts'?
Beautiful bit of projection there. Kraig hasn't the guts to take on the invitation to participate in an online text discussion with people well trained in the art of spotting his bullshit through the rhetorical clouds he weaves. He is a gifted speaker, for sure, like all accomplished liars. I know that you share some skill in this as well, as your dishonesty in this article demonstrates only too well.
I might say that I thought his contribution was serious, thoughtful and properly modest about the limits of what we can know. The bumptiousness and raillery of Dawkins and some other anti-God preachers was entirely absent from his discourse, and it was all the better for it.
Are we talking about the same lying fuckwit? Perhaps you're talking about some other Kalamity Kraig, because the three things that cannot be said about this moron is that he is serious, thoughtful or modest.
I have to confess here that I don’t find Craig’s debating style or manner very attractive. It is too smooth and American for me – and his best moment (again, for me) came when he dropped his salesman’s manner and said, in effect, that he was sorry if he seemed too certain, and that his fundamental claims were modest ones – that the Theist position was scientifically tenable.
Ah, confirmation bias. Of course, if you weren't infected by this pernicious cosmic curtain-twitcher, you might see that all his best moments are those in which he shuts the fuck up about things he knows fuck all about.
The most moving – and most enjoyable – contribution of the evening came from the marvellous Dr Stephen Priest, simultaneously diffident and extremely powerful. I won’t try to summarise it because I’m sure I’d fail. I hope it will eventually make it on to the web. It reminded me of why I had once wanted to study philosophy, a desire which faded rapidly when I was exposed to English Linguistic Philosophy and various other strands of that discipline which made me wonder if I had wandered into a convention of crossword-compilers, when what I wanted was to seek the origins of the universe.
You wandered into the wrong discipline if you wanted the origins of the universe, not least because the truly relevant disciplines tell us that there may not have been any such origin. Not that that will stop your posterboy erecting his tired Kalam bollocks
ad nauseum.
Many of you will know that in his failure to face William Lane Craig, Professor Dawkins was not alone. Several other members of Britain’s Atheist Premier League found themselves unable or unwilling (or both) to take him on.
This member of Britain's atheist Premier League is happy to take Kraig on and demolish his stock nonsense.
The important thing about this is that what Craig does is simple.
Simple is exactly the right word, and you have to be pretty simple to think that his arguments are anything other than apologetic hot air.
He uses philosophical logic,
No, he uses the language of philosophy, and no logic whatsoever.
and a considerable knowledge of physics,
It can certainly seem that way to somebody with zero fucking knowledge of physics. I've forgotten more on the topic than your pet fuckwit has ever learned. All that your liar for jeebus has ever learned is a selection of quote-mines that seem to support his position. He knows fuck all about physics, as demonstrated every time he's had his bollocks eviscerated by those who actually do understand it.
to expose the shallowness of Dawkins’s arguments.
In some respects, I agree. Dawkins' arguments are not that strong, yet they are strong enough, especially against the weak tripe regularly propounded by apologists for various magical entities.
I would imagine that an equally serious Atheist philosopher would be able to give him a run for his money, but Dawkins isn’t that.
Well, I'm no philosopher, being largely of the opinion that philosophy is a complete waste of intellectual bandwidth (not exclusively, I might add, but that's by the by), but I'll happily tear Kraig a new one.
He would have been embarrassingly out of his depth.
Much like yourself in this article. Sure, I know that this is the Daily Fail you're writing in, and that your readership is as dunder-headed as you are, so you'll probably get away with it. This, however, does not alter the fact that you're talking shit.
For what Craig achieves is this. He simply retakes an important piece of ground that Christianity lost through laziness and cowardice, rather than because it lacked the weapons to defend it.
Excuse me while I pop off for surgery to deal with the laughter-hernia that this rectally extracted bollocks has given me. What fucking weapons? Christianity is bollocks. Yahweh does not exist. There are no weapons that can save your fucking preposterous guff from these facts. Indeed, I've often likened arguing for christianity against somebody who actually understands it (and I guarantee I understand your bollocks better than you do) to turning up for a nuke fight armed only with marshmallows.
He doesn’t (in my view) achieve total victory over the unbelievers. He simply says : ‘In this logic, which you cannot deny, and in this science, which you cannot deny either, it is clear that there is plenty of room for the possibility that God exists and made the universe’. No scientifically literate person, who is informed and can argue logically, can in truth say that he is wrong.
Actually, I can. Not only does he stack fallacy upon fallacy (not that I'd expect a credulous, scientifically illiterate twit like yourself to spot this), but his fallacies are themselves stacked on mere blind assertion, a fallacy in and of itself.
In reality, he doesn't even make any headway against the unbeliever, and certainly not the unbeliever who actually understands the material that Kraig presents.
The trouble is that so many ‘official’ Christians have more or less conceded this ground, not being very firm believers themselves, and lacking Craig’s training in logic and science.
Kraig doesn't have any training in science, and pretty much every word out of his smarmy fucking gob on scientific topics is trivial to refute. Of course, if you get your scientific information from your book of wibble, it's hardly surprising that you think this idiot to be the new Einstein.
He is the antidote to the lazy belief that in some way ‘science’ is incompatible with ‘religion’,
Actually, he's the antidote to logic, and in no way does his crass, ill-educated misrepresentation of valid science lend any credence to the logically absurd entity whose knob he seems so eager to polish.
and to the idea that all believers are unlettered morons who think the earth is 5,000 years old and that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark.
Well, I know you're at least well-educated enough not to believe the latter bollocks, and you're certainly not unlettered, but you're most definitely a moron, especially if you think that this genocide-apologist has anything remotely useful to say.
This is, I’m afraid, all too often the tone of the anti-God people who come here to post. It’s settled, you’re stupid, why not give up?
Well, again, to be anti-god would require that I accept the existence of this ridiculous entity. Of course, the question
is settled, but don't give up. You give us all such a good fucking laugh with your fumbling attempts at defence. It reminds me of nothing so much as a teenager attempting to undo a bra for the first time.
It’s not settled. We’re not stupid. We won’t give up.
Except, of course, that it is settled. There may be an entity who could be described as a deity, but it isn't the one you support, nor could it be, given the ridiculous, logically contradictory attributes those people who lied to you, and their predecessors, decided to bestow upon him.
(NB: A note to Mr ‘Crosland’. I won’t respond to any queries he posts here - and I have a small bet with myself as to what form they will take this time - until he replies to my ‘childishly simple’ private letter to him, which he has had since August).
NB: A note to Mr Hitchens. I won't bother posting this where you'll see it, though others are welcome to. I have a small bet with myself that you'd see the expletives and decide that I was unlettered (or, at least, that would be your excuse and you'd stick to it). Don't worry, lots of people I've fucked up the arse with a cheese-covered stick have had much the same reaction. They all think that arbitrary combinations of letters are magical. You know which arse you can shove that fucknuttery into, don't you?
Edit: Minor typos
