Part 3-
@Whatsisface - This is my final post from the debate. Thanks for discussing it with me. I have Dawkin's book in my cart on Amazon.
Concluding statements: Richard Dawkins -He doesn't hold back on expressing his disdain of the resurrection of Jesus. He resorts to usings ad hominems rather than a refutation. Does Dawkins have it in him to rationally discuss the resurrection of Jesus? Lennox wanted to and was prepared to discuss the resurrection and did in a reduced way. I don't believe that Dawkins could rise to the challenge. This was his response below.
Why does Dawkins say that the resurrection of Jesus is petty, trivial, so local, so earthbound, so unworthy of the universe? I find that it portrays a God who truly cares for us.
1. Dawkins said, "...all that stuff about science and physics, and the complications of physics and things, what it really comes down to the resurrection of Jesus. There is a fundamental incompatibility between the sort of sophisticated scientists which we hear part of the time from John Lennox, and its impressive and we are interested in the argument about multiverses and things. And then having produced some sort of a case for a kind of deistic God, perhaps some God, the great physicist, who adjusted the laws and constants of the universe... that’s all very grand and wonderful
then suddenly we come down to the resurrection of Jesus. It’s so petty, it so trivial, it’s so local, it’s so earthbound, it’s so unworthy of the universe.
In Dawkin's last statement below (which, imo, was better than his first), he responds to Lennox's critique of the of his analogy of garden and moves on to Darwin and evolution. He relies on Darwin and evolution to point out there is no need for an intelligent designer and that a designer is not the simpler of explanations for the universe and counter to the laws of common sense. I think, in general, the law of common sense would be that an intelligent designer created the universe. That's why there are more theists.
Dawkins also wrote that, "What Darwin did, was to show the staggeringly
counterintuitive fact that this not only can be explained by an undirected process." Isn't "counterintuitive" contrary to common sense?
Dawkins corrected Lennox by adding, ".What Darwins did, was to show the staggeringly counterintuitive fact that this not only can be explained by an undirected process, it’s not chance by the way, entirely wrong to say it’s chance, it’s not chance.
Natural selection is the very opposite of chance and that’s the essence of it." I still think natural selection is chance. There is no intent.
2. Dawkins said, "When we go into a garden and we see how beautiful it is, and we see coloured flowers and we see butterflies and the bees, of course it’s natural to think there must be a gardener. Any fool is likely to think there must be a gardener. The huge achievement of Darwin was to show that that didn’t have to be true. Of course, it’s difficult, of course, it had to wait until the mid-19th century before anybody thought of it.
...What Darwins did, was to show the staggeringly counterintuitive fact that this not only can be explained by an undirected process, it’s not chance by the way, entirely wrong to say it’s chance, it’s not chance.
Natural selection is the very opposite of chance and that’s the essence of it.
That was what Darwin discovered. He showed not only a garden but everything in the living world, and in principle not just on this earth but on any other planet, wherever you see the organized complexity that we understand that we call life, that it has an explanation which can derive it from simple beginnings, by comprehensible, by rational means. That is possibly the greatest achievement that any human mind has ever accomplished. Not only did he show that it could be done,
I believe that we can argue that the alternative [an intelligent designer] is so unparsimonious and so counter to the laws of common sense that reluctant as we might be because it might be unpleasant for us to admit it,
although we can’t disprove that there is a God, it is very, very unlikely indeed."