Tuesday, March 20, 2007

A Clash of the Dons: McGrath & Atkins Revisited

To follow up on Chris Coleman's request, here is a link to the debate last week between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins. Enjoy!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What was the debate specifically about? I'm not even sure if the debaters really knew either since they didn't really argue on a specific point. Having said that, I was dissappointed with Alister McGrath's arguments for the validity of a Christian worldview; it was a modified form of the Transcendental Argument from Cornelis Van Til except McGrath kept qualifying his statements with words such as "I believe." Therefore, it was very much reducible to a form religious subjectivism(as Peter Atkins kept pointing out). Even if McGrath does not believe in Classicial Apologetics(ontological,teleological,cosmological arguments for the existence of God) or evidentialistic apologetics, he could've at least elaborated on why the world would make more sense if God did create it.

On the other hand, Peter Atkins doesn't really bring anything new to the table either. He doesn't really elaborate on his proofs for his materialist, naturalistic worldview.

One really good question from the crowd was, "Why is atheism a simpler explanation of the universe and why must we must seek to a simple explanation in the first place?"

Christopher J Coleman said...

Thanks for the link, John! Does anyone know if McGrath's book is only available in the UK? Its not on the US Amazon store. Thanks.

Ian Hugh Clary said...

I found the debate to be a lesson in futility. Atkins proved one thing: he's not very nice. He definitely didn't convince me of atheism!

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